Caroline Eng

The Commons

February 18, 2020

Could there be five more self-involved, selfish, self-deceptive characters than those who populate Lily Akerman’s "The Commons" at the 59E59 Theaters? No, these five roommates aren’t evil, just depressingly of the here and now, young people who have lost the ability to communicate honestly with each other. There’s a problem with a 90-minute play about people who do not connect: it is an unrewarding slog for an audience to sit through. [more]

When It Happens to You

October 15, 2019

As a writer, O’Dell seems to eschew melodramatic elements, including pat endings with fully resolved conflicts. This a work grounded in sober reality, a work that rejects the prevalent idea that “closure” is something that will surely erase all scars and “make whole” once more those who’ve lived through such traumatic incidents. If there’s any “message” that O’Dell offers, it’s that keeping silent about having been raped can only exacerbate the pain. At the same time, she suggests, women who’ve experienced such assaults need to be able to come out about them in their own time. [more]

The White Dress

July 13, 2019

Packed with emotion, adolescent angst and eventfully picaresque, "The White Dress" is playwright Roger Q. Mason’s passionate autobiographical saga of a “gender non-conforming queer person of color.” It’s boldly presented and contains vivid performances, but the amorphous structure and idiosyncratic writing dilute its momentum. [more]

Bathsheba’s Psalms, Or a Woman of Unusual Beauty Taking a Bath

April 8, 2019

Ranger spins the story for a 2019 audience mindful of and vigilant about sex and gender issues—especially those involving consent, privilege and toxic masculinity. The play transpires in a sort of limbo-like dimension that is part Iron Age and part near-future. It’s a world in which the old gender rules are fully in play. Powerful men can take and then discard women as they please, and if a woman goes to a pharmacy to pick up a morning-after pill, she’ll get turned down with sneering derision: “We’re a Christian nation now. No more murdered babies on our hands.” [more]

You Wouldn’t Expect

September 26, 2018

Ms. Anselmi succeeds at imparting her solid research on the subject through her sharp dialogue spoken by her strong characters. The play falters with the addition of a chorus who are actors that appear in darkness during scene transitions to intone the names of disparate celebrities such as Charles Dickens, Johnny Cash and Mother Theresa. The explanation for these many names that are cited is that due to their personality quirks they would have been sterilized in North Carolina. That supposition is arguably a stretch, the main thing is this obtrusively weakens the momentum considerably. [more]

The Rainmaker

May 6, 2018

“Never judge a heifer by the flick of her tail” is just one of the many kernels of down home wisdom in playwright N. Richard Nash’s lovely piece of Americana, The Rainmaker. It’s been tenderly revived by the Blackfriars Repertory Theatre and The Storm Theatre Company with every role perfectly cast. [more]

The Fight

November 5, 2017

Playwright Jonathan Leaf’s prodigious research, accomplished dramatic construction and clever device of threading a mystery throughout the events make the play quite engrossing. There’s also the sociological angle as the characters eloquently state and defend their differing beliefs and agendas that include careerism versus motherhood. [more]