In today’s Wall Street Journal I review four New York shows, Familiar, Eclipsed, Blackbird, and Disaster! Here’s an excerpt.
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Danai Gurira is the zombie-whacking star of “The Walking Dead” and the author of “Eclipsed,” a dead-serious drama about the Second Liberian Civil War that transferred to Broadway this week after a deservedly successful 2015 run at the Public Theater. Now she’s written a new play in which nobody gets killed—onstage, anyway.
“Familiar” is a comedy of assimilation that centers on Donald and Marvelous (Harold Surratt and Tamara Tunie), an upper-middle-class Zimbabwean couple who have escaped the poverty and violence of their native land by emigrating to suburban Minneapolis and wholeheartedly embracing the American way of life (lasagna for dinner, football on Sunday afternoon). Tendi (Roslyn Ruff), their oldest daughter, has followed in their footsteps by shedding her African accent, converting to Christianity, becoming a lawyer and getting engaged to a nice white boy…
Given the potential of its subject matter, it saddens me to report that “Familiar” is so familiar. Think “Abie’s Irish Rose” or “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” and you’ll get the idea: Ms. Gurira has rehashed all the clichés of its well-worn genre as if they hadn’t long since been done to death…
As for the Broadway transfer of “Eclipsed,” which features Lupita Nyong’o (“12 Years a Slave”) and the four other members of the original off-Broadway ensemble cast, Liesl Tommy’s production has lost nothing by being moved to a larger house. The play remains a staggeringly potent, perfectly performed snapshot of five African women who are fighting for their lives amid the roiling chaos of an unimaginably bloody war of all against all….
David Harrower’s “Blackbird,” a pruriently manipulative tale of pedophilia that made a lot of noise off Broadway in 2007, has finally made it to Broadway in a big-stage revival similar to the smaller-scaled production that I reviewed in this space nine years ago: Jeff Daniels is the star, Joe Mantello the director, with Michelle Williams, lately of “Cabaret,” replacing Alison Pill as the vengeful victim of the piece. It’s a have-it-both-ways shocker that seeks to make us sympathize (but not really!) with a 40-year-old man (Mr. Daniels) who molested a 12-year-old girl (Ms. Williams)…
If you’ve been waiting impatiently for the Broadway transfer of a cheesy, campy off-Broadway jukebox musical that spoofs the disaster flicks of the ’70s, “Disaster!” will be your huckleberry. Somehow, though, I doubt the world is full of sixtysomething fans of “The Poseidon Adventure” who long to see what can best be described as an only-the-jokes-have-been-changed knockoff of “Airplane!”…
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To read my reviews of Familiar and Eclipsed, go here.
To read my review of Blackbird, go here.
To read my review of Disaster!, go here.
