"The supernatural scenario is a little like something one might find on an eerie episode of Alfred Hitchcock's old TV anthology. Unfortunately, it all comes off as fairly stilted and heavy-handed. This is due in part to some of the flowery language that Nogueira uses ('I have the strength of a river to drown my sobbing heart with a loving rage'). But it also has to do with Ortman's direction, which eschews realism in favor of a highly self-conscious theatricality."
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"The spooky and melodramatic aspects of the plot, and the two characters’ surreal pile-up of connections, are less engaging than the astute social observations the playwright threads throughout the piece...Nogueira, a playwright of some renown in Brazil who’s a newcomer to New York, still manages to land some astute and amusing comments about living in New York."
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“Is one story real and one imagined? Are both real?...If one does not come away with an answer, 'Real' at least shows Nogueira’s gift for poetic lyricism, and the questions he raises linger. It’s not a straightforward piece of theater, but it’s often fascinating, and it’s refreshing to find a theatrical voice as iconoclastic as Nogueira’s."
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