“Now open at the Public Theater...Nagle’s play traces the origins of American finance and the follies of its bottomless appetite for capital to the exploitation of the Lenape by the city’s Dutch settlers.”
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“Many of the characters in Mary Kathryn Nagle’s ;Manahatta,; now running at The Public Theater, wear their naïve hearts on their sleeves, appearing trustworthy until the moment they’re proven otherwise...Laurie Woolery’s production isn’t understated, but it does make a statement.”
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“Overfamiliar writing like this, however earnest, doesn’t introduce us to fascinating people; it confirms narrative tropes...We know what we’re witnessing is devastating, but what we feel is abstraction, as if we’re looking at the chalk outline of a body without the body in it.”
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"At under two hours, 'Manahatta' doesn’t sprawl, but the breadth of its canvas is so large that almost inevitably some passages feel rushed, and some characters more archetypal than fully realized—figures glimpsed from afar and sometimes hazily."
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“The play disappoints because it could have dug deeper, told us something research materials don’t or can’t. May it inspire other, beginning writers. Anyone can scribble a moral; mapping a journey to the revelation is hard.”
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“Mary Kathryn Nagle’s ‘Manahatta’ offers a useful service: She is a Native American playwright reminding us what it truly means to reckon with the blood that white Americans have shed in the name of independence and progress. Thankfully, Nagle’s ambitious play, making its New York premiere at the Public Theater, has more to offer than just a history lesson.”
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“ ‘Manahatta’ is a thing of mirrors...as Nagle makes blazingly clear, much work needs to be done to break the mirror image of the past that continues to plague us today.”
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“Thanks to the razor-sharp writing, directing, and solid performances all around, ‘Manahatta’ is a powerful discourse on the lives of the Lenape during the colonial era and through to the present day. But be sure to listen closely as the zingers fly, or you might miss interactions like this one between two of the colonist interlopers discussing how they might manage things when they drive out the Native Americans and, with them, the fur trade on which they depend.”
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