Scraps NYC Reviews and Tickets
Member Reviews (19)
See it if A black lives matter type of play . See it if you want a show about blacks being killed by white law enforcement.
Don't see it if If you dont want a graphic, profanity laced show.
See it if Well acted inner city drama in the first half that becomes surreal in the second half. The prologue didn't add anything.
Don't see it if Don't like violence - skip it. It also does tell a story that has been told before.
See it if you want a thoughtful, nuanced look into the aftermath of police violence on a community.
Don't see it if you want clear resolution and happy endings. Read more
See it if you are prepared to face current American social & racial history, head-on; and want to be inspired by athleticism in acting & writing.
Don't see it if you’re ill-prepared to navigate the complexities of real Black lives and their stories.
See it if you want to understand what police brutality can do to those who experience it.
Don't see it if If you lack empathy. This play asks you to step inside of others' shoes. Read more
See it if you like a relevant story told in a different but somewhat confusing way
Don't see it if you like a polished story
See it if You are interested in new work, you seek out theatre that wrestles with challenging problems in society
Don't see it if You are easily offended by language or made uneasy by graphic content
See it if You want to see a well-acted,well-written Play about the black experience with police shootings
Don't see it if You don’t like experimental theater because second half is surreal
Critic Reviews (18)
“Inoa’s bracing and intense new play is about lives cut short by police violence, and the cataclysmic harm those killings do to the people left behind...If you can feel the influences here, Ms. Inoa nonetheless uses them in service of her own sharp vision. Act 1 isn’t entirely successful...Inoa creates a microcosm of a black neighborhood, so self-contained that it feels like an invasion the moment a white police officer enters...What unfolds from there is gut-punch sickening.”
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“This ambitious, vibrant new play...has two distinct, contrasting acts. The first is set on a trash-strewn stoop in Bed-Stuy, four months after the shooting of a black teen-ager from the neighborhood by a white cop...The second act imagines the grim future of souls forged in this atmosphere, turning suddenly surreal and impressionistic, like a hellish game show. It’s interesting theatre, but not as affecting as the first act, in which the characters feel like real people."
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“Because 'Scraps' keeps turning into a different play every few minutes, it's easy to become distracted from the ugly, disturbing truths on offer. Dismayingly, the playwright comes close to achieving self-sabotage...Her instincts may be good, but 'Scraps' is all over the place; every time it starts to become compelling -- which is often -- the playwright upends her gameboard and issues a new set of rules. This has a dampening effect on what could have been a white-hot drama."
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“The characters in Inoa's Brooklyn aren't there to educate or enlighten white people, they're not there to be mere morality tales, they're there to exist, to be given opportunities they might not be given in real life. They are there to be listened, not argued or conversed with...Which is why when the play transforms from a naturalistic slice of life, into a surreal gameshow from hell in its second half, we are asked to sit and take in the fears...And we feel blessed to be allowed to witness it.”
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“Raw, edgy, and searing drama...Smith’s staging of that outrage is hypnotic as freezes, slow motion, blaring music, and pulsing lighting are employed to stunning effect...However, Smith’s sustained stage wizardry only goes so far as the play’s opening is overdone and its conclusion unsatisfyingly departs from realism. In between there are moments of greatness...’Scraps’ succeeds when its passionate eloquence is simply expressed and it falters during its avant-garde detours.”
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"Every sentence seems to contain the 'n-word'…The Flea's resident company struggles to make this material more than skin-deep or, in a couple of cases, to consistently speak the machine gun-paced dialogue so that every word registers…As the nightmare funeral morphs into a bizarre gameshow...the ensemble-coming together with superb vocal and physical cohesion-behaves in surrealistically rhythmic fits and starts…Carter delivers a riveting performance as the anguished child."
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"A sharply drawn piece of writing that engages quite purely and authentically with the issues of our times...It resonates, powerfully...The problem of the piece is the shift in tone...Although it’s done with a clear and purposeful perfection...The performances of all the players are excitingly precise and strongly orchestrated within an authentic and abstract flair but as written, the overarching theme feels distant and not as connecting as the real life struggles presented in the first half."
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"In 'Scraps,' Geraldine Inoa, making a memorable professional playwriting debut, imagines the deep and lasting after-effects on the people left behind when police kill somebody...Smith has gotten impressively convincing performances out of the cast of young actors...This is not an easy play. It confronts the audience with uncomfortable language, disorients with its shifts of tone, and demands that we enter into an unrelievedly racist world and a starkly Manichean worldview."
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