BROADWAY & ME QUICKIES

The Play: America, Who Hurt You?; a solo show in which the writer-performer Sarah Jones uses her award-winning talent for embodying characters of different races, genders and ages to figure out why the country has become so divided  Written by: Sarah Jones        Directed by: Eric Ting One good thing: Favorite characters from Jones’ previous works—including the feisty Jewish grandma Lorraine and the no-nonsense black street philosopher Rashid—show up but the most effective moments are when Jones sensitively portrays people who have been shortchanged by the American dream, among them an enslaved woman, an Irish immigrant at the turn of the last century and the gay son of a Japanese woman interned during WWII   One not-so-great thing: Even with the finely-crafted impersonations, this is basically a TED Talk and unfortunately it doesn’t say much that hasn't already been said many times before     

The Play: The Holes; a shaggy satire about gentrification, masculinity and the need to believe in something set in a rundown upstate bar with a mysterious backroom Written by: Max Wolf Friedlich        Directed by: Michael Herwitz One good thing: The four-member cast is firing on all cylinders with Tina Benko giving a wonderfully gonzo performance as a busy-body barfly, Grantham Coleman hamming it up to just the right degree as a know-it-all tech bro up from the city, Jack Mulhern quietly stealing every scene he’s in as a clueless townie and Bubba Weiler, providing nuanced ballast for all the surrounding wackines as the reluctant barkeep One not-so-great thing: So many balls are thrown up in the air that too many storylines get dropped, too many situations are left unresolved and nearly all the themes are under-explored    

  The Play: The Pass; a revival of a 2012 British drama set in a series of hotel rooms over a decade as two would-be soccer stars grapple with their dreams of success, their sexuality and the pressures of toxic masculinity  Written by: John Donnelly        Directed by: Max Hunter One good thing: Matisse Ratron-Neal is particularly charismatic as an alpha-male willing to sacrifice everything and anything to make it; and the scenic design is particularly clever, making subtle changes that differentiate the rooms, mark the passage of time and aid the storytelling, despite the play being staged runway-style with audiences members seated on both sides of the stage area One not-so-great thing: Some of the dynamics between the men feel dated but then, there are still very, very few out professional athletes     

The Play: An American Daughter, a revival of the political satire that depicts the unfair standards women in public life have to negotiate when a nominee for the job of U.S. Surgeon General finds both her career and her family thrown into turmoil by the revelations that she skipped jury duty and made condescending remarks about stay-at-home moms  Written by: Wendy Wasserstein        Directed by: Sarna Lapine One good thing: The supporting cast is stacked with such stage pros as Dakin Matthews, Robert Sean Leonard, and the invaluable Mary Beth Piel, who delivers the most incisive performance despite having the least lines; plus the Georgetown living room set that Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams has created is so HGTV-perfect that I was ready to move in One not-so-great thing: Wasserstein wrote this play while she was dying and she tried to pack too much into it, which is exacerbated by the fact that the production roughly stitches together various drafts of her script b...

The Play: Shifters; it's basically just a when-will-they-get-together romcom about a working-class Nigerian British man named Dre; and an upper-middle class Congolese-British woman named Des (short for Destiny) but it's so sweet and engaging that it's easy to see why this two-hander was nominated for the Oliviers’ Best New Play alongside such heavyweights as Kyoto, Fear of 13 and Giant   Written by: Benedict Lombe        Directed by: Lynette Linton One good thing:  Part of what makes this one so special is how it portrays its black characters as people with the kind of everyday problems everyone shares instead of treating them as avatars for various social issues and although the Olivier-nominated Heather Agyepong was out at my performance, Daniel Ezra is so totally charming as Dre that it’s impossible not to route for him One not-so-great thing:  The constant jumping back and forth over the couple’s nearly two-decade-long relationship can make ...

The Play: The Potluck; a meta-musical fantasia— part docudrama, part meditation on generational trauma and part political call to arms — about the aftermath of the 1979 Greensboro Massacre in which five labor organizers were gunned down by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party  Written by: César Alvarez        Directed by: Sarah Benson One good thing: Similarities between the political situation in 1979 and current events when social justice activists like Renee Good and Alex Pretti have been killed are undeniable and are most dramatically brought home in the 7-minute excerpt from a documentary that Alvarez’s mom made after the murder of her friends  One not-so-great thing: But the narrative here meanders, too often veering into the self-indulgent (random ruminations on queerness) and the cutesy (a number with dancing mops) and, with the exception of one or two ballads, the score creates more of a vague vibe than a clarifying through-li...