Yen NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (148)
See it if you can handle a starkly barren view of humanity. Brilliantly depicted yet so disturbing! Not a fun evening but very worthwhile. Jarring!
Don't see it if you don't want to be uncomfortable because the story and underlying themes WILL give you an emotional workout that's uncomfortable. Read more
See it if you are ready for an intense good play with great actors, twists and turns in the plot and deep emotional discoveries.
Don't see it if an easy, slow, relaxing evening is what you are looking for.
See it if you want a play that challenges you yet still can have humor with intense acting (even if the premise is not unique).
Don't see it if you aren't ready to commit for 2 1/2 hours. Or want to see HAMILTON.
See it if You like small plays (particularly gritty, contemporary British ones) and good acting. Not an easy play, because the teen boys' lives r hard
Don't see it if You don't like grit, tough situations, swearing.
See it if you like pets or serious dramas
Don't see it if you can't take serious, real family problems and relationships
See it if Intense, tour-de-force acting from Lucas Hedges, Justice Smith and Stefanie LaVie Owen in a powerful British play about loss, love and hope
Don't see it if A dark play about poverty, abuse, neglect, & alcoholism, if also about love and hope in the darkness. Not always easy to watch
See it if you want to see a slice of life of a very poor family in Britain and the teen boys who are left to fend for themselves. Great cast.
Don't see it if you do not like character studies and need more plot driven dramas. Read more
See it if you like earthy, well-acted and absorbing theater.
Don't see it if you have trouble with accents. The street British speech is often difficult to understand.
Critic Reviews (31)
"The evening does have several moving scenes. Mostly, the drama feels contrived, which sets up a barrier to getting involved with the characters…The moment in which Hench tells Jennifer that he doesn’t know how to touch her is enormously affecting, the most powerful expression of the terrible cost of the boys’ abandonment..We’re left, despite an ill-fitting conciliatory ending, with the ultimate message that desperate lives can be influenced by acts of kindness but are hard to truly change."
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"What begins as a hyperbolic, even pornographic vision of social breakdown thus evolves in a more melodramatic direction, with clear Dickensian overtones...A pulsating soundtrack and Lucy Mackinnon’s frenetic video projections heighten the sense that 'Yen' is less about the reality of poverty than its exploitative portrayals in popular culture. Anchoring that critique is Hedges who exudes quiet intensity and torment in a performance that defies clichés about troubled youth."
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"Hedges is excellent here as a boy who copes with life by being prickly and snappish, but who is essentially introspective and caring underneath…Smith is a gifted actor, who makes us believe his storms of devotion and resentment are coming from the gut…Graynor’s Maggie shows her bottomless neediness, without turning us against her.”
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"The play's heartbreaking success comes from watching Jenny crack the taciturn Hench open...Considering the complex layers of the script, director Cullman makes the proceedings too slick at certain moments...but he nonetheless coaxes a grueling must-see performance from Hedges...Happily, Jenny is more than a transformational plot device, with her own woes and wants, but Owen at times struggles to make congruent the character's simultaneous naïveté and self-possession."
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"A remarkable production that does the extraordinary: It creates empathy for people that we otherwise would likely have no empathy for...It's witty and energetic and the action moves swiftly. But Cullman's true genius shows in the desolate vulnerability he evokes from all four actors...And then there's Hedges...His character says very little, and yet when Hench struggles to speak, the emotions that range across his face tell the entire story of his short, wrecked life."
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"This is not a play for everyone’s taste, but I found it fascinating and, in the end, moving...The two lead actors are truly remarkable...Justice Smith as the hyper-active Bobbie gives a 'how does he do that' type of performance without sacrificing the audience’s empathy with his circumstances. Lucas Hedges gives an equally dimensioned and entirely engaging performance as Hench, the older and more internalized brother."
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"What sets it apart is a that it is just a socio-economic investigation but a moral indictment as well...Yes, conditions in council housing, or projects, is bad. That is easily agreed. Here is where she pierces the heart. It is already too late, she seems to be saying...The acting is exceptional...For American audiences used to closure and the conclusion of their dramas, 'Yen' is not always easy, but ultimately that is what makes it such a rewarding and necessary evening of theatre."
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