Perversion
Perversion
Closed 2h 10m NYC: West Village
42% 15 reviews
42%
(15 Ratings)
Positive
7%
Mixed
33%
Negative
60%
Members say
Confusing, Excruciating, Disappointing, Ambitious, Quirky

About the Show

13th Street Repertory Company presents the world premiere of this allegorical drama about a home invasion. A scathing political satire of the America we lived through and where we still live today.

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Critic Reviews (4)

Talkin' Broadway
April 1st, 2017

"An ambitious if rambling dystopian satire...There are many inspired moments and examples of smart writing within the play...But these periods of focused lucidity tend to get watered down by a convoluted plot that wanders into more tangents than you'll encounter in an entire semester of a geometry course...It does make for some rough going for an audience trying to absorb the free-flying loose elements of the play, which cries out for trimming and editing to make it more accessible."
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TheaterScene.net
April 8th, 2017

"A tedious melange of the absurdist styles of Genet, Eugène Ionesco, Jules Feiffer and Dr. Seuss...There’s a lot of speechifying and violence, but really no discernible plot. It’s all supposed to be ominous and funny. It isn’t. The play’s ending is just as indecipherable as what came before it. If Blake had shaped the material into a more coherent form, it might have been entertaining, but he hasn’t...The actors cannot be faulted for overplaying their cartoonlike characters."
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Theatre is Easy
April 9th, 2017

"The play is meant as an allegory for the current U.S. government. But for an allegory to work, it must capture our imagination and investment within its own context. This play never earns our investment because we have no idea what any character in the play needs or wants...Theatre of the Absurd should always offer us something to root for...The needs of 'Perversion's' characters are completely unintelligible, and so spending 130 minutes with them becomes something of an exercise."
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Off Off Online
April 6th, 2017

“So wrongheaded on nearly every level...The company, god bless ’em, commit 100%...Characters warble and argue and pontificate endlessly about—well, one is never quite sure…At once leaden and glib, the dialogue constantly ties itself up in Gordian knots of faux profundity, leaving the actors, bless ’em, with little to do but go really, really, big. The result is a show that strains to be 'Waiting for Godot' but ends up 'Waiting for Guffman.'”
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