"Definitely worth seeing, but you may not think so until after it’s over...In the viewing, this production is rarely exciting in the terms of conventional drama. Nor is its portrayal of the creation of a film entirely credible. But it’s smart in expressly theatrical ways, and its effectiveness is subliminal. Even the seeming somnolence of Hoss’s voice-over narration has its purpose. Ideas have been planted in your head without your even being aware of it, as if while you were sleeping. "
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"Most of 'Returning to Reims' doesn’t seem much like theater...You can sometimes sense the audience growing restless at the absence of front-and-center drama. But director Thomas Ostermeier gradually adjusts the style toward an explicit awareness of theatricality...Even as 'Returning to Reims' asks of its audience a certain empathy and patience, it also suggests the importance of those qualities in addressing those whom the left has left behind."
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"An intellectually ambitious, uneven but fascinating, often anti-theatrical piece of theater...For at least the first half Ostermeier actually uses the lack of conventional drama to craft an enthralling, prodigiously smart piece of live performance that’s part theater, part audiobook, part film...If only these sections of personal conflict were as compelling as the stretches in which we’re left alone with Katy and Eribon. The writing in these conversational interludes often sounds clunky."
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"'While it often proves thought-provoking and incisive in its socio-political arguments, the piece is too scattershot to make a real impact...Ostermeier lets his theatrical conceits get the better of him, squandering the play's thematic ideas...There's plenty to admire, not the least of which is Hoss' quietly commanding, sensitive turn...The film-within-the-play is substantial enough to stand on its own. It's too bad, then, that 'Returning' ultimately adds up to less than the sum of its parts."
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"Eribon's trenchant memoir has become an exhilarating stage play...The most politically incisive play yet to come out of the Trump era...Ostermeier mostly allows Eribon's words to tell the story...We watch Paul's documentary on a large screen above the stage...It powerfully illustrates an already evocative text...'Returning to Reims' will keep you thinking long after you leave the theater...It will be frightening, enraging, and absolutely necessary."
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"The most stimulating play to be seen in New York in months...'Returning to Reims' exerts a grip all its own, in no small part because it speaks volumes about how we ended up in the current rancid political climate...This is extraordinarily rich material, a banquet of ideas and emotions, and if Hoss initially seems an unusual choice to be voicing the words of a middle-aged gay Frenchman, her astonishingly deft handling of the text effectively tables all such questions."
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"Ostermeier’s staging of this memoir pulls us in deep...We watch with utter amazement as we see the process of image, idea, and the spoken word melting into one another before our eyes...It’s almost shocking how this creative team has found a way to present a reading of such intense and high minded philosophy within a theatrical framework and find a way to keep us personally invested…‘Returning to Reims’ falters a bit in the end, losing its connection to Eribon’s writing."
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“The…low-key focus on Didier's identity issues…is not as gripping as one could wish...We're hearing his thoughts through the medium of a woman's voice…, creating a Brechtian effect that distances us emotionally. Moreover, the emphasis on the class-related preoccupations of European politics…seem more appropriate for a TED lecture than a dramatic presentation... Hoss, an exceptional artist, reads the narrative in a naturalistic, barely accented, deceptively objective tone; its mood is perfect.”
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