White Noise
Closed 3h 15m
White Noise
83

White Noise NYC Reviews and Tickets

83%
(171 Ratings)
Positive
90%
Mixed
8%
Negative
2%
Members say
Great acting, Thought-provoking, Absorbing, Ambitious, Relevant

About the Show

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks ("Topdog/Underdog," "In The Blood") returns to The Public with a world premiere play about race, friendship, and our rapidly unraveling social contract.

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Show-Score Member Reviews (171)

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148 Reviews | 12 Followers
95
Intense, Masterful, Absorbing

See it if You want to see amazing performances and topical situations. You don’t mind a show 3 hours long. It’s intense and thought provoking.

Don't see it if You din’t Like sex and violence depicted on stage. An intense show with a hard moral. Nail biting drama.

254 Reviews | 26 Followers
93
Relevant, Masterful, Intelligent, Great acting, Absorbing

See it if love to be challenged. brilliant writing, a complelling story and marvelous acting. Loved it. Daveed Diggs is a thrill to watch.

Don't see it if you don't want to be provoked or disturbed - this is a thinking person's play.

207 Reviews | 34 Followers
93
Thought-provoking, Profound, Great writing, Great acting, Absorbing

See it if like tough unflinching plays...you like great acting...you like to be challenged in the theater...you want to be haunted

Don't see it if you're looking for something light and frothy... or maybe do... it kind of seems to go down that way... I loved it and it was BRUTAL

94 Reviews | 64 Followers
92
Profound, Intelligent, Great writing, Great acting

See it if you’re interested in plays about race relations, with a different spin. It’s quite provoking. Daveed Diggs gives a master class on acting

Don't see it if you have difficulty appreciating serious plays that ask you to stretch your imagination. The play is a bit long,

417 Reviews | 190 Followers
92
Resonant, Thought-provoking, Indulgent, Great acting, Absorbing

See it if You want to see a masterful performance by Daveed Diggs in a modern play about racism in the modern world. Great supporting cast.

Don't see it if Seeing behaviors that will make Caucasians squirm with recognition of unknowingly behaving badly among friends of color. Read more

67 Reviews | 3 Followers
92
Great writing, Thought-provoking, Riveting, Relevant, Great acting

See it if you're human. If you care about issues of race and racism and are open to being challenged. Theatrical! Superbly crafted and performed.

Don't see it if you aren't open to thinking about issues of race and racism in a new way.

299 Reviews | 41 Followers
92
Resonant, Thought-provoking, Must see, Great acting, Absorbing

See it if You want to see very wonderful actors who make you think about racism today.

Don't see it if You like light fluffy plays

63 Reviews | 26 Followers
91
Masterful, Great acting, Great staging, Thought-provoking

See it if you appreciate the innovative/ approach to theliterary material, exquisite acting, amazing production - and if you're a fan of Daniel Fisch.

Don't see it if you expect true-to-the-book adaptation. Also, if you saw OKLAHOMA and think this is going to be more of the same. Read more

Critic Reviews (28)

Theatre's Leiter Side
April 7th, 2019

"'White Noise' has many interesting, even compelling scenes; it may even be the first mainstream play to include actual bowling. On balance, however, it's overlong, overwritten, and often preachy…Despite such artificialities as lengthy, didactic monologues delivered directly to the audience, the acting is realistic. Each excellent actor works doubly hard to sustain interest in the characters, their relationships, and whatever Parks is saying, but there's too much blah blah to succeed."
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DC Theatre Scene
March 20th, 2019

“Parks’ bizarre, disturbing and in some ways brilliant new play...The playwright weaves in her sharp social and cultural observations in various ways...There are also rich layers of clever, thought-provoking metaphor...’White Noise’ would not work as well as it does without the performances of the four cast members...It asks us to see America as, simultaneously but separately, white and black."
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The Guardian (UK)
March 20th, 2019

“‘White Noise’ finds Park at her most realistic, which is fun in some ways and frustrating in others. It’s a pleasure to hear her vital, playful intelligence shoved into the mouths of contemporary, recognizable characters...The play feels overlong and somehow abridged, confined to four characters it is narrow where it might have been expansive and sensational where it might have been restrained...That doesn’t mean that the play and the queasy complicity it demands won’t provoke or disturb you."
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The Wrap
March 20th, 2019

"The four characters aren’t so much characters as they are archetypes of race, class and privilege who level stinging barbs at one another...Four remarkable monologues interspersed throughout...Each monologue is a veritable essay on the subject of race in America, and yet each is as personal and heartrending...It’s appropriate to note that Parks writes great sketch comedy...These sketches float the first act of 'White Noise,' making it the fastest 90 minutes in recent theater history."
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Gotham Playgoer
March 24th, 2019

"Parks’s writing combines humor, drama, pathos and polemic. The actors are superb. Diggs and Sadoski are a formidable combination...Oskar Eustis’s direction is fluid. The play could use some judicious trimming and a stronger ending. Nevertheless, it stands out as one of the most original, thought-provoking plays I have seen in quite a while."
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Broadway & Me
March 23rd, 2019

"Each character is given a soliloquy in which to examine his or her own psyche, with an emphasis on how race and sex have shaped it. And under the sure-handed direction of the Public’s artistic director Oskar Eustis, they’re all brilliantly performed by a sensational cast...Yet even these performances can’t mask the fact that these soliloquies—and even this three-hour play itself—aren’t really saying anything we haven’t heard before about race in this country."
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Daily Beast
March 20th, 2019

"The mechanics of this slavery produced gasps in our audience. Inevitably, the friendship between the two men is supplanted by the ugly dynamics of master and slave...Parks' ideas and arguments are so alive one can look past the play's plausibility-stretching plot points; indeed, the slavery dynamic is so convincingly acted, frighteningly so, that its plausibility becomes sharpened...A thought-provoking and thoughtful examination of racism."
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Financial Times (UK)
March 21st, 2019

"'White Noise' is neither particularly funny nor incisive as Parks delivers her critique of empty 'woke' platitudes and cultural appropriation with all the subtlety of a blunderbuss...Parks and Eustis seem to have abandoned nuance and dramatic ambiguity for strident theatrical agitprop. But it’s not even clear what the political moral is in this noisy, muddled play."
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