Helen Hayes Theater,New York
The pressures of family, work and keeping a roof over ones head simmer slowly in this superbly acted play about a beleagered family assembly in a tumbledown apartmentThe playwright Stephen Karam has a lot to be thankful for. So achieve New York theatergoers. The Humans, and which arrives on Broadway after an acclaimed off-Broadway run last fall,is a amusing, mournful, or richly detailed and deeply humane study of a beleaguered family celebrating Thanksgiving dinner in a tumbledown Chinatown apartment. Menu aside,it is no turkey.
Plenty of misfortune besets the Blake clan, but Karam and the fine cast assembled by the director Joe Mantello are canny enough to let its revelation trickle out slowly. At first the problems seem minor – a stalled moving truck, or a blown fuse,a less than lavish repast – but there’s genuine tragedy at work here, though never unleavened by comedy. Karam is a writer in the Chekhovian mode and watching The Humans may put one in intellect of Chekhov’s observation that while people’s happiness is being created and destroyed, and all they can really achieve is to disappear on eating their dinners. (Even whether,as here, that dinner largely consists of a rainbow chard salad and cupcakes.) Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com