"The play is no disaster, just strangely becalmed and unresponsive. Only rarely can you detect its pulse, let alone the feeling Stephens describes as “the sadness in your chest.”"
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"As this extended episode of This Was Your Life moves forward, director Lila Neugebauer steers it with a capable hand. With three actors of this caliber onstage, the show delivers several moments of poignancy...But Morning Sun doesn’t have the sense of mystery within the ordinary that energized such previous Stephens works as Heisenberg and Sea Wall."
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"Performed on a set that seems less real and more suggestion, or perhaps fading memory, of a living space – sticks of furniture here, a small kitchen there – the play is performed by its excellent cast with the precision and grace of a ballet, with each actor fading in and out of time periods, conversations, soliloquies, additional characters and perspectives. Morning Sun is a beautiful thing to watch, as much for the elegant dance of its moving pieces as for its powerful understanding of the pains and joys of those remarkable unremarkable lives."
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"Most of the good stuff in the show comes out of the dark in voices that ring true, if not always interesting – and never thrilling."
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"A lot of playwrights are poets, but not many are craftsmen like Simon Stephens, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and the delicate two-hander Heisenberg. His new play, Morning Sun, is now running at New York City Center as part of Manhattan Theatre Club's off-Broadway season, and it is a master class in theatrical precision."
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Whether all this adds up to a play will be matter of debate, but the later scenes drag noticeably, and when actresses of this caliber don't make a strong impression, something isn't clicking. One wonders what drew Stephens to this material and what he is trying to say with it.
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"3 stars...Simon Stephens’ Morning Sun demonstrates that it’s possible for a play to be annoyingly specific and generic at the same time."
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"4 stars!...It’s a tricky business, replaying your life story—or your mom’s, or your grandma’s. And it takes a good five minutes or so for Morning Sun to find its rhythm. But once it does, it feels like flipping through a terrifically detailed, and colorfully narrated, photo album."
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