"A becomingly modest production...Simply a simple story that vibrates with ever-widening resonance and implications...It’s the linguistic aspect of 'Knives in Hens' that is so profoundly moving...Takacs and his movement director, Yasmine Lee, give expressive life to the physical relationships among these characters...The performances are precisely focused without being intensely emotional. Nonetheless, the sum effect of their talk and actions is deeply emotional."
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“Ninety minutes of inarticulate characters struggling to express inchoate feelings in language stripped of any specificity…Instead of simulated sex, the production offers movement sequences, adding another level of off-putting stylization to a production already loaded with them. Nothing good can come of this and indeed, before long, a killing will occur -- although, since it is impossible to care about what happens, it unfolds to little effect.”
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"Compelling if occasionally opaque...Has the feel of an Appalachian folk tale that has been shaped through many generations of retelling...Spare and often lyrical in its exposition and dialogue, 'Knives in Hens' is open to varied interpretations...But director Paul Takacs keeps things anchored largely within the post-Eden analogy...The play truly belongs to Robyn Kerr, who beautifully captures the transformation of Young Woman from a state of child-like innocence to one of self-determination."
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“Scottish playwright David Harrower's poetic and metaphoric ‘Knives in Hens,’ produced in Edinburgh in 1995, is now first having its New York premiere. Best known in New York for the two-handers, ‘Blackbird,’ ‘A Slow Air’ and ‘Good with People,’ this play expands his cast to three but is a great deal vaguer about time and place. Unlike those plays, we aren't given much information about the characters or their lives in this challenging play which will infuriate some and fascinate others.”
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"Harrower’s characters may appear simplistic but they are complex and multi-layered because of their unconscious impulses and sensitivities revealed in their dreams...The director’s staging is impeccable and concise...The hauntingly lovely music during the movement sequences heightens the symbolism of the lovers’ dance...In some instances, clarity was sacrificed to convey the demographic of Pony and Young Woman."
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"The visuals are ripe and perfectly set for the telling of this multi-dimensional fable... Surprisingly though, with so much intensity and engagement from the talented cast, 'Knives in Hens' remains head bound, and doesn’t translate down into our heart and our emotional core...Although Harrower’s seminal work suggests an inner quest for knowledge and freedom from the norm, the play and this production is surprisingly unmoving."
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“Takacs has crafted a production combining elements of theatricalism and naturalism, but the result is drearily sluggish, uninvolving, and not particularly enlightening. There's no way a viewing of this production would inspire thoughts of a 'modern classic'…Little in the production plumbs the potential depths of Harrower's play. The actors, dressed in garments of indeterminate vintage…muffle the poetic starkness of the language and fail to do more than communicate the basic narrative.”
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“’Kerr, Taylor and Haqq pour out with furious intensity Harrower’s almost musical staccato dialogue...The tension between the actors is palpable. It may be winter in the story, but these three performers create intense heat...The characters forge intense connections with one another, but the Young Woman’s transformation is astonishing in the short period over which the story takes place.”
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