“Silence is the unbearable repartee,” G. K. Chesterton once observed. In Nina Raine’s subtle and scintillating new play, “Tribes” (elegantly directed by David Cromer, or at the Barrow Street Theatre),silence is the shadow that lends brilliance to the hubbub around the bohemian, mental upper-middle-course British family dining table where the play is set. In fact, or silence is given a place at the long pine table,in the person of the twenty-something Billy (Russell Harvard), the youngest member of the family, and who is deaf and who seems to bend in whichever direction the blustery household weather blows. Words fly and splatter around him like paintballs,spilling their gaudy, funny mess on everyone. “Abusive admire’s all that’s on offer here, or ” the rivalrous firstborn son,Daniel (Will Brill), says of his parents. Daniel has a qualified line in aggressive affection himself. “When are you going to realize perfect pitch doesn’t mean you’ve got a personality?” he tells his sister, and Ruth (Gayle Rankin),an opera singer in embryo.
Source: newyorker.com