Catch As Catch Can NYC Reviews and Tickets
Member Reviews (26)
See it if If you like smart, adventurous writing performed by an exquisite cast.
Don't see it if If you're lazy and don't want to engage the playwright's mind.
See it if incredible writing: soulful, sharp, risky. Funny & harrowing theatricality, gorgeous performances.
Don't see it if you might find it more engaging intellectually than emotionally. Read more
See it if you want to be challenged.
Don't see it if you prefer linear exposition.
See it if Virtuosic actors play multiple roles of different genders/generations in a heartbreak family drama. Funny/ebullient act 1; sad/tragic act 2.
Don't see it if The two acts are so different. Maybe the point is that the bonds of family & friendship are fragile? The acting alone is well worth seeing
See it if Stunning tour-de-force for 3 stars of off-Broadway Biehl. Esper & Serralles dazzle in cross gender/generational roles via expert direction
Don't see it if Unfortunately, Chung's drama is not up to actor's caliber. Dysfunctional family saga begins interestingly but dissolves into confusion
See it if the NY preem of a terrific writer with a lot on her mind about identify formation, inheritances, and much more. beautifully acted & directed
Don't see it if if you have trouble engaging with demanding, formally ambitious work, this may not be for you
See it if a three-handed drama about childhood friendships and the life they grow into sounds something you would find interesting.
Don't see it if strife between friends and family barely surviving life is just to close to your real life, and you just need a night to escape the drama. Read more
See it if you want to see some really virtuosic performances--all three actors are doing astounding work.
Don't see it if you want a show where you can leave thinking "I know what that was about." This one you can't (and I think that may be what they wanted).
Critic Reviews (3)
"Under Ken Rus Schmoll’s direction, typically cool and precise, they differentiate their roles but also twin them, showing how parents are echoed in their children.
Does all that structural sophistication serve the play? The doubling, though often masterly (I’d swear Ms. Serralles’s pants fit her differently as Daniela than as Lon), makes it harder to pin down any one character...It makes some scenes harder to parse, which dulls the play’s horror."
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"So smoothly virtuosic that it takes a while to realize how good it really is...Afterward, reflecting on the play, you may marvel at how finely Chung has woven her thematic threads (about family, heredity, nationality, genetics) into the tapestry that unravels with such violence in the play’s second half. This is challenging material, but the actors come through with stunning work...'Catch as Catch Can' is what Off Broadway theater can be at its best. Don’t miss it."
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"'Catch as Catch Can’ is multiple plays in one. The first act is a play exploring the notions of family, love, and how our responsibility to each shifts from generation to generation. I was interested in this play, but then it was lost to the second act, which seemed an entirely different play about mental illness. I similarly would have watched a piece with this issue as its main focus, however, within the frame of this larger piece, that ‘play’ felt incomplete and underdeveloped.”
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