Noah Robbins

Let’s Love!

October 26, 2025

The fourth evening of one-act plays by Academy Award-winning screenwriter and director Ethan Coen is coyly called "Let’s Love!," when by rights it should be called "Let’s Have Sex!" In three one-acts, all on the same theme, couples are looking for love in all the wrong places - or all the wrong ways. Neil Pepe, artistic director of Atlantic Theater Company smoothly directs the high-powered cast led by Aubrey Plaza, Nellie McKay and Mary McCann as he has done the previous three Coen evenings ("Almost an Evening," "Offices," and "Happy Hour.") What is unusual about "Let’s Love!" is that the language is continually raunchy and the foul-mouthed women have all the best lines, though not the most completely written characters. [more]

Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch

October 5, 2023

In 1961, Ossie Davis channeled the hurt of growing up in segregated Georgia into "Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through The Cotton Patch," humorously attacking the cause of his suffering rather than giving into it. A Broadway revival of the play, the first since those heady days of the modern Civil Rights Movement, is a current reminder that it's possible to smile through the pain. That it's a needed one is the tragedy. [more]

Lewiston/Clarkston

November 28, 2018

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater is presenting a theatrical event by Idaho theater poet Samuel D. Hunter ("The Whale," "A Bright New Boise," "The Few," "Pocatello," "The Healing," "The Harvest"): a long one-act masterpiece (Clarkston), a 40-minute communal dinner served on picnic tables of what the characters would be eating and a curtain raiser, "Lewiston," which has the same themes and symbols as the later play. Taken as a whole this is a remarkable achievement, probably the best Hunter has created so far. Director David McCallum must be given some of the credit for this magnificent evening, and in particular actor Edmund Donovan who isn’t so much performing as living his character of Chris in "Clarkston." [more]

“Master Harold” and the boys

November 29, 2016

Watching these three actors is an incredible experience. As Willie, the slower, funnier tea room worker, Sahr Ngaujah, often the butt of the jokes, never loses his humanity. Noah Robbins finds all the complexity in the adolescent Harold, and Leon Addison Brown makes dignity palpable and believable as Sam. [more]