Rancho Viejo NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (121)
See it if you like spending time with off-beat characters and plays that explore ideas of community.
Don't see it if you have no patience for long plays with almost no plot.
See it if you love Playwrights Horizons quirk, inventiveness & slow burns
Don't see it if you cant sit thru three hours.
See it if you like shows that challenge you.Acting is superb.Pace is slow.Parts are confusing, but it is well worth staying til the end!
Don't see it if you want a short, straightforward play. This one will make you shake your head and wonder what's going on and who's who. Worth it, though!
See it if u like serious theater, a superb production, plus a critical view of suburban America in recent times. I found it's 3 hour length absorbing.
Don't see it if Well, OK, it is long, but there are two intermissions. I found the characters & their complexities challenging and entirely satisfying.
See it if you are game for an unpredictable, uneventful & mostly unresolved ride with some vaguely recognizable characters
Don't see it if you can't be bothered with plays that don't even try to resolve their mysteries; if 3+hours of not much happening isn't your idea of drama
See it if You are prepared to spend 3 of the strangest hours you may experience at the theater this season
Don't see it if You need a beginning, middle, and end - and don't have an appreciation for the absurd Read more
See it if Quirky, funny story told in quick scenes. Mare Winningham and Julia Duffy were standouts. Very, very funny in many parts.
Don't see it if Three hours long. Got weird in the third act.
See it if You want to see a very Southern California style show. If you know what I mean by that expression you will probably enjoy this play !
Don't see it if You are looking for a classic comedy. This plays veers off into many unusual directions. Fast action is your thing. Play has 2 intermissions
Critic Reviews (22)
"I found much in the play challenged my expectations of an engrossing, funny evening. Sure, Aukin and his crafts team nicely captured LeFranc's realistic surface as well as the surrealism underneath. And Blum and Winningham are terrific...But ‘Rancho Viejo's’ slow-building combination of super realism and its more absurdist underpinnings don't merge smoothly or all that meaningfully…The first two acts leave us with as many unsatisfactorily addressed questions as the last."
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"Like Buñuel but with a softer touch, LeFranc skewers the comfortably middle class, whose lives are as fungible as their houses…The usually excellent Winningham is completely believable but just a little bit whinier than one might wish…'Rancho Viejo' holds up surprisingly well given its three-hour length. Its low-key humor keeps popping up where it’s least expected. While never gripping, it never loses us either."
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"The cast is so solid. You may not warm to the characters, but the actors are true north on delivering them…There are nifty, and telling, small pieces of business...For all the struggle for meaning, the play’s resolution is a downer…The production makes a big demand. Running time is three hours with two intermissions…The first two acts here seem interminable but—stay with me here—perhaps they were intended to underscore the tedium of life at Rancho Viejo. In that, they succeeded."
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"Beneath his goofy spoofing of a group of lazy-minded suburbanites, LeFranc has tucked some big layers of melancholy and some unsettling hints of menace…LeFranc develops this conflict for over three hours. It’s a long haul. Still, there’s something intriguing in LeFranc’s unsophisticated and sometimes outright dopey characters…It helps immensely, though, that the cast is so talented and watchable...Winningham gives the production an achingly real and affecting center."
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"Everyone else seemed to find this play hilarious…Although I wasn’t missing the ‘joke,’ I found the play much too distressing to ‘LOL’. The cast is perfect in their comic delivery, each delivering with an exacting characterization…I could go on about each and every one…All wonderful, seasoned professionals, playing the words written perfectly…I just wish there was a point to all the words they were saying to each other, or that the play was as good as this ensemble."
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"The understated performances evoked by this strange, three-act exploration of suburban ennui are halting, sad, and funny…LeFranc is determined to give us an accurate depiction of people like us and is invested in the idea that we’ll discover something of meaning or use, even if there probably isn’t all that much to find. Whether or not you’re okay with the empty landscape at the end of the tunnel is – admirably on a formal level, but riskily on an emotional one – left up to you."
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"Gently directed by Daniel Aukin, this three-hour dark comedy is not for those with short attention spans...That said, 'Rancho Viejo' has real stuff on its mind, impeccable performances, some good laughs, and more than a few touching moments...Still, 'Rancho Viejo' is a difficult show to recommend. It’s not quite strange enough to recall Pinter nor funny enough to conjure Beckett...The play seems helplessly in search of a conclusion and the final one is too tidy a stretch."
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"One feels tempted to compare 'Rancho Viejo' to 'The Flick'...Both plays take their time to offer small details about everyday life and emotions that feel well observed, both have moments of quiet amusement, and both, despite extraordinary casts and fine direction, are probably better reads than physical excursions for many theatergoers...There’s an absurdist and nihilist bent to ‘Rancho Viejo.’ It’s not surprising that LeFranc has expressed his admiration for Samuel Beckett."
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