"Everything is ridiculous, and after an hour and 40 minutes, 'Des Moines', like a night spent drinking at home, ends with a stubborn lack of resolution."
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"The emptiness of 'Des Moines' feels as vast and unsettling as its Great Plains setting. Facing up against the cutoff of death, all there is to do is drink and sing and avoid talking about it."
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"I wasn't bored at any time during the play's one hour and 40 minutes. I suspect this was due less to the play itself than to the strength of the performances, all of which end up being as hilarious as they are absurd."
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Making its belated New York premiere, this 2007 drama by the late Denis Johnson, long acclaimed for his novels and short stories, is a kind of dramatic spook house, haunted by the shades of other playwrights' better, more vivid works. It strains to unsettle, using stratagems so well-worn that they have lost the power to provoke. If I had to guess, I'd say that Johnson probably didn't spend much time going to the theatre; if he had, I doubt he would have come up with something as derivative as this.
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"Des Moines sputters at the end...But even if its final destination proves unclear, the rambling journey getting there is infinitely rewarding."
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American author Denis Johnson often wrote about misfits as part of his vision of a semi-mythic West. His play "Des Moines" from 2007, one of seven he wrote, now having its New York premiere at Theatre for a New Audience, includes these themes. The play brings together five unlikely Iowa people for an impromptu party that seems to go off the rails. We are never certain if it’s all a dream or if it really happened. While the cast led by Johanna Day, Arliss Howard and Michael Shannon seem to know what is going on, we the audience are entirely left out of the equation.
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"The actors are shooting stars. They are comets crisscrossing the stage, tearing it up, and throwing light on one another and the audience."
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"There’s not really any deeper meaning to be found in one’s cups, here–just momentary camaraderie and some very strange dreams. Maybe that’s the best humanity does have to offer us."
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