"If this round-robin of frenemy fire puts you in mind of 'The Boys in the Band,' Mart Crowley’s 1968 play about catty and self-hating gay men a year before Stonewall, you aren’t far off. JC Lee’s muddled new comedy, 'To My Girls,' which opened on Tuesday in a Second Stage Theater production, does function, in part, as a millennial update to the earlier and much more pointed work. Call it 'The Boys in the Sand,' set not at the dawn of liberation but at its eyes-wide-shut dusk."
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"Between drinks, dancing, and lip syncing to Katy Perry and the Pussycat Dolls, the friends realize they may have outgrown each other. Friendship breakups are as painful and heartbreaking as romantic breakups, but they are so rarely dramatized. And unfortunately, 'To My Girls' spends less time establishing the bond between why these millennials are friends and more on trading clever barbs"
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"Lee portrays a continuity of gay life that is simultaneously heartwarming and depressing: The characters' pilgrimage to a gay Mecca, their embrace of drag, and their insistence on reuniting with chosen family beautifully make the case for a gay culture that is distinct and has value in the 21st century."
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[It] has its innovations, including its setting (an Air BnB rental in Palm Springs), a diverse cast, and up-to-date references to SoulCycle, Xavier Dolan, and The Real Housewives of Atlanta. White privilege gets called out, as often happens these days. And the requisite half-naked young hunk isn't the usual dumb bunny; this time, he is un-neurotic and mature beyond his years. Otherwise, it's business as usual, with occasional feints at seriousness deflected by wisecracks about Taylor Swift, Kellyanne Conway, and Instagram. Laughs are guaranteed, but it's a little surprising to see Second Stage putting its resources into such a routine genre piece.
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"Ultimately, 'To My Girls' may provide a welcome relief for pandemic-affected audiences starving for non-stop camp and fabulousness. Others, however, who have been weaned on a regular diet of charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent, would realize that a single episode of 'RuPaul's Drag Race' offers a more raucous and emotionally satisfying evening."
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"'To My Girls' is often laugh-out-loud funny, in the bitchy, catty way gay men always are in plays about gay men. ... But the problem here isn’t the flavor of gay so much as the flavor of the play: 'To My Girls' is somehow both wildly tonally dissonant and also entirely monotonous. The boys put on Britney, the boys squeal, the boys argue, the boys turn earnest and sad; repeat, repeat, repeat, occasionally in drag. There is constant discussion of ruining or not ruining the weekend"
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Lee peppers his worn scenario with plenty of pop, cultural and political references, well-crafted zingers and familiar conflicts. Dating apps, Dancer from the Dance, Sex and the City are among the totems cited and a Trump supporter is declared to be a “MAGA fag.” To My Girls succeeds as a rote genre-piece for a niche audience desiring a simplistic gay play where there’s laughter, tears and resolution in drag danced to The Pointer Sisters. Lee’s thinly drawn characters are highly playable.
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"'To My Girls' is rock-solid sitcom speak. A gay fluff piece that did not rock my socks off. (Of course, this could be you cup of tea.) Call me crazy, but I am one of those theater folks that wants something to happen, even when it appears otherwise. I want a toe hold. Here, all I found was a glossy surface."
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