"Bruce Norris’s “Downstate” is the kind of play that takes over your body gradually. Its tension seeps into your limbs, settles tautly in your solar plexus and does not leave. Out on the street after the performance, your every synapse remains on high alert."
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" 'Downstate' is in no way a paean to pedophilia, but it prompts us to examine our vengeance, and that’s a lot to ask. It is touching in ways that make us uncomfortable to be touched...Brace yourself, and see it."
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" 'Downstate' wants to make you sit in discomfort as long as possible and see what lies on the other side."
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"Engaged viewers may find themselves feeling that their moral compass has gone haywire...it’s not the violent denouement that is likely to remain with you, but the infinite shades of gray that Mr. Norris infuses into the play."
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" 'Downstate' is a difficult play about difficult subject matter...but the play seeks to do something different, more complicated and morally challenging."
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"Take a deep breath and try to ruminate calmly on the position playwright Bruce Norris takes in his scintillating new play...'Downstate' is proof positive that you can love a play that turns you inside out."
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"Norris has written a complex and compassionate play, but not a preachy or judgmental one. The audience is never pushed to forgive or condemn, but rather to evaluate."
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"It powerfully reclaims the stage as a home for dangerous ideas, a place where the thoughts we would rather ignore confront us — not with startling moral clarity, but sublime doubt."
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