About the Show

A new play exploring family, power, and social tension in a fractured world.

Launching Colt Coeur’s 15th Anniversary Season, The Surgeon and Her Daughters by Chris Gabo reunites the playwright with director Adrienne Campbell-Holt, who first developed the play through the Cherry Lane Mentor Project in 2016. Described as a 21st-century Les Misérables, the work is both epic and intimate, examining family, grief, and the struggle to endure amid overwhelming challenges. Set against the vibrant and volatile backdrop of New York City, the play delves into the shifting boundaries of truth and justice, the complications of honor and redemption, and the sense of being caught in an unforgiving social hierarchy. The production continues Colt Coeur’s exploration of stories that confront the social and emotional tensions of contemporary life.

Critic Reviews (6)

"All these characters eventually converge, as they might in an epic novel. But without a runway of several hundred pages, the coincidence feels rushed and unearned. We can always sense Gabo’s hand guiding the wheel of fortune."
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"...a great big hunk of playwriting that all but dares you to digest it. It is packed with outsized emotions, brimming with arias, and crowded with characters who have plenty to get off their chests. It's also unwieldy, following its plot down so many blind alleys that one worries it will never get anywhere at all."
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"The play is itself bigger than its story which gives it a rich depth that caught many of the audience off-guard."
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The Surgeon and Her Daughters presents a powerful story of seemingly unrelated people whose lives are upended as they struggle with insecurity and grief. Chris Gabo’s script artfully follows characters who struggle, deceive, fight, joke, and hope while reckoning with what their lives have become.
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The Surgeon and Her Daughters gathers up a bouquet of story threads and arguments, then lets them drop without ever fully exploring any to their logical conclusion.
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"The piece ultimately feels less like a modern epic and more like a collection of impassioned arguments punctuated by moments of genuine, if uneven, humanity"
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