"A professional cast overcompensating for a clown car of a script brimming with parent-child tensions, a mother with dementia, an inappropriate student-teacher relationship, the Vietnam War and fraught race relations — here including, but not developing, those between blacks and Latinos...The most lasting impression at Wednesday’s performance was an anachronistic Lee Child paperback all too visible onstage."
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“There are a lot of social injustice issues touched on in this piece and at times it seems like Peress is not attuned to dealing with all of these problems simultaneously. Even so, the issues of sexism and race pulse throughout the production and the wonderfully written text allows for a lot of rich themes to be played with and explored. I hope to see this production on a larger (non-festival) scale because it would more accurately set the scene...Still...this is a show worth seeing.”
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"Deals with a family that, in resolution, blames its dysfunction and destruction on a racially provoked murder...Unfortunately, the few minutes allocated to this disclosure do not validate Vera’s alcoholic self-destruction or the need to merely touch upon a vast array of other equally important issues...At times the plot seems implausible given the situation and circumstances...It is difficult to have much compassion for the underdeveloped characters."
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"'Let the Devil Take The Hindmost' is a play about a middle class, mixed-race family that offers a modicum of poignancy and levity but little urgency. The implied point of the piece gets buried by the desultory details...Director Lorca Peress oversees a competently professional cast, but as Vera, Farrar transforms from over-the-top to sympathetic without the credible arc or dramatic jolt that might have justified the digressive-feeling scenes that lead up to it."
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"'Let the Devil Take the Hindmost' is that rare play that gives a critic almost nothing about which to complain...It belongs at the Public Theater or even on Broadway — it is that good…Lorca Peress directed, and I can only admire the way she brought the script to life on stage. Every movement had a purpose…The producers have a piece of theatre here that I think would win not only artistic praise but also would be commercially successful well-beyond the FringeNYC festival."
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"‘The story focuses on the fraught marriage of Pablo, a college professor, and his high school math teacher wife. The complex and bitter relationship the two share is an interesting spectacle to watch as it unfolds…The onstage chemistry between the two is magic…This play is more nuanced than a simple focus on racial tensions. Covering topics such as interracial relationships and privilege amongst minorities themselves, the outcome is a thoughtful and fresh production."
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