Duat NYC Reviews and Tickets
Member Reviews (32)
See it if you like original productions with a cast that works hard to deliver entertainment with meaning.
Don't see it if you purely want to be entertained as this material is well thought out.
See it if you are open to theatrical surprises. The first act is completely unlike the second. Both acts have beautiful singing and poetic writing.
Don't see it if continuity is important to your theatrical experience. There are three deeply varied and only normally connected sections.
Critic Reviews (12)
"Jones’s hearts-and-flowers-themed exploration of life and what lies beyond. This buoyantly didactic show takes gentle pains to remind us that our next breath could well be our last...This sui generis performance piece has been given a sumptuously homemade production under the direction of Will Davis...The sequence is defiantly unlike either of the other two parts in 'Duat,' yet it is also thoroughly of a piece with them...For Mr. Jones, there’s comfort in eclecticism."
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"A luxury of theatrical overabundance. Writer-performer Daniel Alexander Jones and his ’80s soul superstar alter ego Jomama Jones are serving up a kind of gourmet tasting menu—a flight of Joneses, or Jones three ways. Each section in the evening's triptych is in a genre by itself...After many pleasures, we finally move into the piece's most musical sequence and we are stunned by the talents before us...Jones is fully capable of measuring our hearts, but he doesn't. He lightens them instead."
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"'Duat' is a complicated piece whose ideas are too big to work onstage. One gets the sense that Jones and his director didn’t want to leave anything out of this overstuffed production...Jones has a scholar’s love of black art, but everything gets further confused in the second part of the show...In 'Duat,' Jones is dramaturgically at war with his most inspired creation, one that benefits from the freedom of his imagination, not from the limitations of his 'truth.'"
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"'Duat' is a show unlike any other playing in New York...'Duat' brims with ideas, not all of them fully developed. Under the laissez-faire direction of Davis, the piece jumps between Jones' personal narrative to sections about Egyptology and pop divas...A lack of narrative clarity regularly leaves us feeling lost in Jones' expansive spiritual and intellectual kingdom...Still, the enchantment of discovering a world so big and unexplained is a feeling one rarely encounters outside of childhood."
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"Having worked hard, and effectively, to establish a certain mood in Act I, Jones executes a sharp left turn, dragging the show into someplace altogether different...Where did the poetry go? If the director, Will Davis, can't reconcile the show's opposing halves, he has cast the production well and maintains a warm, affable feeling throughout...There are many, many fine things in 'Duat' but, as it stands, they are in need of sorting out."
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"Directed by Will Davis, 'Duat' is a powerful example of the dynamism of
collaboration and personal inspiration. Distinctly unique and featuring a
young and effervescent ensemble of actors, in 'Duat' Daniel Alexander Jones has created a wonderful homage to his alter-ego and life in the form of a
memorable and rousing piece of theater."
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"'Duat' is a most sincere and ardent confession, delivered with a kaleidoscope of a theatrical magnum opus. Daniel/Jomama Jones does not spend a single moment on stage without being thoroughly captivating. The writing is simply breathtaking...'Duat' certainly promises an experience to be remembered, and moreover, to be pondered upon, as the audience exits with seeds of hope planted in their hearts."
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"Its high concept is American avant-garde art...The goal of these themes to connect, however, was a fail, resulting in the opposite: a play that couldn’t make up its mind about what it wanted to be, with no apparent arc, no journey, and nothing new to say...To his credit, the cast of talented performers gave Jones and director Will Davis, who helped develop the piece, 100 percent...'Duat' ends up feeling like a self-indulgent piece that needs to go back to the drawing board."
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"There’s something beautifully unapologetic about where 'Duat' goes, conceptually and staging-wise. Its horizons keep broadening, into the cosmic, the metaphysical, and you go with it...This is a show that sprawls all over the place, but does so in a way that embraces the poetry and possibility of failure...'Duat' is fierce, funny and mournful; a sung, sometimes whispered, ode to race, queerness and difference. It profoundly touched me."
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"Up and very coming director Will Davis and Jones are a good match. Together they create a reality/fantasy that surpasses one lifetime...There is not one member in this cast that isn’t extremely talented and all are to be applauded, especially the very young and talented Colimon and Gund-Morrow. But make no mistake: this is Daniel/Jomama Jones' show. There is not a moment on stage that isn’t well thought out and breathtakingly simple. The writing is clear-cut and captivating."
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"The rare theatre production that divides audiences in its label of either insanity or genius, which is what theatre is supposed to do: break boundaries...A layered theatre experience with nuances and symbols that will come off beautiful and intelligent to some viewers, while to others it will be a moot point...'Duat' is a theatre production for the intellectual who likes to uncover the hidden meanings that make the story surpass its telling to become a discussion of morality. "
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"Attractively designed by Arnulfo Maldonado (sets), Oana Botez (costumes), and lights (Solomon Weisbard), and uniformly well performed, ‘Duat’ is the kind of thing Soho Rep has been doing for years. Aficionados of this strain of downtown theatre may flock to it, but, while appreciating bits and pieces, and even laughing now and then, this viewer often longed for a Rosetta Stone to decipher that Jones boy's artistic hieroglyphics."
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