"Rinne Groff’s shaky parable of art and love and licorice...Affectionate, but never especially persuasive...The play borrows from the current template of the rom-com, in which love allows a childish man to grow up and an uptight woman to loosen up. But there’s something uglier and yet not ugly enough operating here...The play takes a more compelling turn just at the end, exploring what we do after a calamity and how we might, with care and pain, rebuild our boardwalks and our hearts."
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"Faltering but beautifully performed dramedy... Director Marissa Wolf does strong work, and Groff’s script includes a number of elegant touches, like time hops and flashbacks...The play’s weakness comes from its lack of a serious central conflict...Its main tragic moments, told in monologue, concern animals that have been dead for more than a hundred years. For a drama that's about focusing on reality and present suffering, there's more sentimental smoke than emotional fire."
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"If 'Fire in Dreamland' falters a bit in its tale—which remains compelling overall thanks to Groff’s humor and sensitivity and the production’s game trio of actors—it does so by never quite grabbing us fully by the throat. It has us firmly and kindly by the hand, and it leads us on a largely lovely journey, but there’s pain and shock and betrayal along that path, and in Wolf’s rendering we’re kept largely insulated from these gut feelings."
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"This fascinating and funny new play...Jones makes an appealing and instantly relatable everywoman...Director Marissa Wolf has tightly staged this play with jump cuts, denoting a shift in scenes using only a slight pulse in the lights...Groff makes a persuasive argument: That dishonesty exists because we want it to — because we prefer beautiful dreams to depressing reality."
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“A play that is marked by persistent vagueness of purpose...Jones's presence is effortlessly compelling, her delivery authoritative...Kate, as written, isn't sufficiently engaging, and her willful blindness to her circumstances becomes increasingly grating...Wolf, can't bring any clarification to this skittish tale, her overall handling feels professional...An unpersuasive drama about art and love. A great drama about this terrible event has yet to be written.”
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"Choppy but nonetheless intriguing and well-acted play...One of the strengths the playwright brings to the table lies in her ability to take a familiar trope and provide it with unexpected twists and turns. None of the three characters is merely a stereotype...Under Marissa Wolf's direction, all three actors leap fearlessly into their performances...There definitely are times when the play would be well served with the trimming away of superfluous elements."
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"Marissa Wolf directs Groff’s opus creditably, and Jones, Gjokaj and Beltran perform it well. Though perhaps ultimately unable to make Kate completely sympathetic, Jones does her attractive utmost...As Groff spun her unsatisfying tale, I knew what every word meant, but more and more I stopped caring."
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"It’s an interesting and beautifully staged play, directed by Marissa Wolf, with a fantastic central performance from Rebecca Naomi Jones, that’s less than entirely fulfilling only because Groff tries to squeeze quite so much into its 90 minutes...Here, there’s real-world tragedy, too. But the experience ends up being, perhaps, a bit like that fire: thrilling and exciting, and just too much to take in."
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