Safe House

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L.B. Browne’s debut play Safe House is a gripping and tense state-of-the-nation drama that is one of the best plays of the year. It is criminal that it is only running two weeks on Theatre Row as it needs to be seen by more audiences. Benjamin Viertel’s taut cast led by Tony Award-winner Karen Ziemba and three-time Tony nominee Marc Kudisch could not be better. A great many topics are discussed in this dysfunction family drama which is representative of the temper of our time.

On the eve of a presidential election, Rock, a right-winger, is convinced that the outcome will plunge the country into a second civil war. As a result, he has been spending the past year building a doomsday bunker in his suburban Pennsylvania home basement with the help of Slipper, his docile, stay-at-home wife.  Rock is also coping with a diagnosis of Huntington’s Disease which can cause changes in mood, trouble focusing, clumsiness, and obsessive-compulsive disorder and has known about it for almost one year.

However, he has not told his wife or his live-at-home 27-year-old attorney daughter Ashley who seems to live only for her family and her job. His compulsion with finishing the bunker may, of course, be due to his illness which has been getting worse: he has been having conversations with his father The General who died in Vietnam when he was a boy and a seven-year-old version of his younger daughter Claire who ran away from home a year ago when she was 16, both of whom seem to be very real to him. Ashley’s private life was about to start at that time but she canceled her plans to get her own apartment in order to stay and help her parents deal with her sister’s unexplained absence.

When Claire returns home unannounced, spouting left-wing sentiments, the temperature heats up. While Rock insists that communists want to take over the government, she points out they are Democratic Socialists who want universal health care. Claire has been living in a commune since she left home and is now several months pregnant. In fact, she has come to ask for money for an abortion which when her father hears about it, he immediately refuses anyone in the family to help her. But Claire has an appointment in New York in two days which is the end of her window of opportunity to get her abortion, while her father is opposed to even letting her leave the house. When Ashley discovers her father’s diagnosis, things really reach the boiling point.

Browne’s play brilliantly demonstrates the dangers of the conservative-liberal divide in the U.S. as the play works its way to its shocking conclusion. The title is ultimately ironic as it is not safe for any of its inhabitants: Claire reveals that the reason she left was that her father burnt all her books as she had acquired one that her parents had not approved and that her room had no lock affording her no privacy. Ashley’s life also seems to have been stifled by her family though she has coped differently with her trauma, but considers herself asexual when asked by her mother why she never dates.

Under Viertel’s direction, the cast give taut performances in a play where the temperature is continually rising to its unexpected conclusion. As Rock, an army veteran and retired Department of Defense contractor, Kudisch gives a larger-than-life portrayal of a man with a great many discontents. He is also able to incorporate elements of Rock’s Huntington’s Disease as he loses more and more control of his mental health. Ziemba makes Slipper a mousy type who has enabled her husband for 30 years while not always agreeing with him. As Ashley, Anna Roman is so tightly wound that one expects her to break at any given moment. On the other hand, Grace Church as her more adventurous sister runs the gamut of emotions.

Among the minor roles, Glenn Seven Allen as Rock’s demanding and bullying father is not only extremely fit but the play gives him an interesting back story which is slowly revealed in the course of the play. As seven-year-old Claire seen in flashbacks, Julianna Layne allows us to see the emotions she endured as a child under Rock’s inflexible rule. Justin Lee Miller is fine as both sympathetic Doctor Merritt, Rock’s friend and long-time doctor, and curious Officer Moxley who comes looking for Claire soon after she arrives.

The physical production proves to be exactly right for the play. Forest Entsminger’s basement set allows for both a climactic reveal as part of the plot and hidden exits and entrances for the flashbacks and hallucinatory characters to come and go. ARTONE’s contemporary costumes look as if they could be from the actors’ own wardrobes, so real and lived in do they appear. Mary Ellen Stebbins’ lighting accommodates the flashbacks as well as the realistic scenes in the basement set without any windows. The props by Samantha Tutasi enhance the visuals of the play.

Not only is L. B. Browne’s play Safe House a very accomplished dramatic work, it also manages to be a play for our time including many of the themes of our daily life. Director Benjamin Viertel’s cast of seven brings the play vividly to life so that one recognizes these modern people. If you are interested in the state of new American drama or are just interested in an engrossing night out at the live theater, this is a play not to be missed.

Safe House (September 2 – 13, 2026)

split/decision

Theatre Four at Theatre Row, 410 W, 42^nd Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit https://www.bfany.org/theatre-row/shows/safe-house/

Running time: one hour and 45 minutes without an intermission