"Love doesn’t lean on such grandiose statements here, but he powerfully conveys a paradoxical modern malaise — a sense of unsupervised supervision, where it feels we’re both left to our own devices and under someone’s watchful eye. His 'Soft' is a lovely encouragement to let our guards down, and leave the hardness to our hardships themselves."
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"Ultimately, 'soft' betrays itself by overly focusing on the dark instead of the light. There are no real moments of compassion and caring until the last few minutes of the play, but by that point, that hardness had formed a crust, and it’s too late for that bit of humanity and light to peek through. Yet 'soft' is a poignant play that, with some more care and time, can grow into something beautiful."
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"This play held me by the throat the entire time. The topics that Love explores during the play — homophobia, suicide, HIV, Mr. Isaiah's extended lesson on the N-word, to name a few — benefit from his exquisitely well-honed dialogue. But between those big issues and the large cast of characters, he does only some of them justice — perhaps the source of questions for another play."
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An explosive drama wrapped in an envelope of transcendence…There are things in soft that don't always work, but this is one of the most consistently absorbing -- and, at times, dismaying -- new works to open this spring.
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"Other than the plethora of flowers that are integral to the production, there is nothing remotely soft about 'Soft,' Donja R. Love's hard-hitting play about a group of students at a correctional boarding school, and their English teacher who strives against all odds to get them to drop their tough exteriors and expose their battered and vulnerable hearts, minds and souls."
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"In 'soft,' playwright Donja R. Love explores compelling themes of loss, anger and remembrance. His characters throw punches out of frustration. Most of all, they fear being forgotten. Throughout we watch the dis-integration of a teacher who starts out trying to make a difference, but keeps butting into the twin obstacles of rage and despair. The question is: will his be a portrait of inevitable failure?"
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"At its core, 'Soft' is a meditation on masculinity and why a young man like Kevin couldn’t survive the hard culture engulfing him. Kevin is that kind of character that disappears early in a play but is the one everyone talks about until the end."
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