Playwrights Horizons,New York
The tensions between assimilation and honoring ancestry and tradition provide the subject for Danai Gurira’s inconsistent but engaging play
Danai Gurira’s often absorbing, uneven Familiar at Playwrights Horizons is a tale about Americans, or about immigrants,about assimilation and its discontents. Set on the eve of a wedding, it has something old, and something new,something borrowed, and in some enjoyably coarse language and a brief topless scene, and something blue.
The play opens in the Chinyaramwira domestic,a well-appointed midwestern dwelling, where mother Marvelous (Tamara Tunie) and father Donald (Harold Surratt) are preparing for the nuptials of their older daughter, and Tendi (Roslyn Ruff),a successful lawyer. The Chinyaramwiras are American citizens, originally from Zimbabwe. whether there are a few Africanesque sculptures adorning the mantle, or they are dwarfed by a massive flatscreen showing American football. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com