"I could describe Brian Watkins’s “Epiphany,” ... as an existential dinner-party play. Or a satire of academics, armchair psychologists and the general intelligentsia, always trying to find a common language for our ways of living in the world. It could be called a critique of our modern society of self-interest. A statement on grief. Or a ghost story."
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"Brian Watkins’s intriguing, but ultimately blurry and low-impact, group portrait inspired by James Joyce’s 'The Dead' emerges more like an artistic exercise or theme and variation on that famous 1914 short story than a fully satisfying drama on its own."
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"Many plays have strong beginnings and flub the ending, but Watkins here seems to have worked backwards. He has a gorgeous image in mind, and he knows who his Stranger should be. It’s the dinner part he hasn’t quite worked out yet, nor the tidings that she brings."
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"Most of the play consists of conversation that touches occasionally on topics of some specificity ...but mostly floats on higher and drier philosophical planes, without quite settling for long on a single subject, unless it’s the general idea that the world is in some state of crisis or decline."
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"Once you accept that 'Epiphany' is a mix of Joycean DNA, Buñuelian atmospherics, and a heap of New Yorker-level cocktail chatter, you can relax and enjoy it. There will be no grand, head-smacking revelation, just a small but piercing insight: 'We’re not meant to be alone.' Something your sweet, dotty grandmother might forward you as an attachment you never bother to open. "
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"Throughout this curious play, laughter mingles with mystery and unanswered questions: Why has Aran been standing alone over there by the piano all this time? Why do the lights keep dimming unexpectedly? Has something catastrophic happened in the outside world when all the cellphones start buzzing inside that suitcase? We never learn the answers, and it seems we're not meant to. "
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In trying to take the measure of our jittery, late-pandemic world, Watkins relies on familiar theatrical genres; Epiphany is both a comedy of manners and a country house mystery. (As a character delightedly notes, Morkan owns a cocktail cart, a staple of polished drawing room plays.) But, in this case, the mysteries are ontological. Watkins is wondering what has happened to us over the last couple of years, the long-term effects of forced isolation and creeping anxiety. That he does so with such a light touch, ensuring plenty of laughter, is one of the most remarkable things about Epiphany.
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"It is an altogether thrilling work of theatrical artistry, splendidly directed by Tyne Rafaeli, supported with outstanding design elements, and superbly acted by its cast of nine, with much of the evening resting on an extraordinary performance by Marylouise Burke."
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