"This play is a more formally ambitious, far-reaching work than “Too Heavy for Your Pocket,” with which Ra made his New York debut in 2017, when he was known as Jiréh Breon Holder. What stumps him here, in Volume 20, is how to let his unnamed 21st-century Man reject existential exhaustion in a way that doesn’t seem pat. Like Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu’s “Pass Over,” rewritten for its recent Broadway run to allow more space for joy, this play wants to illuminate an uplifting path out of pain. But its final section turns muddled and didactic, its poeticism forced."
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"It’s a tantalizing setup, but director Christopher D. Betts hasn’t found a coherent tone for the piece; moments that reach for absurdism sometimes land as uneasy comedy, and the play’s resolution feels unearned. That’s a shame, because Ra’s writing is, at its best, thoughtful and poetic."
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about Black people struggling to survive in the face of deliberately or negligently inflicted pain, throughout history and at this very moment. four Black men gather… from four different eras. Presumably.. all four died violently, What little interaction the characters have with one another that reflects their different eras and perspectives made me hunger for more…
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