The Broadway premiere of Lydia R. Diamond's STICK FLY, directed by Kenny Leon, opens on Broadway tonight.
It was supposed to be a relaxing weekend at the family home on Martha's Vineyard... until the baggage got unpacked. Set at the elegant summer home of the well-to-do LeVay family, STICK FLY begins when two adult sons bring their significant others (one a fiancée, the other a new girlfriend) home to meet their parents for the first time. Soon, secrets are revealed, civilities are dropped and identities are explored in a harsh new light. Race and rivalry, class and family, all come together for an explosive comedy of manners about today's complex world.
STICK FLY stars Dulé Hill ("Psych," "The West Wing") as Spoon (Kent) LeVay, Mekhi Phifer ("ER," 8 Mile) as Flip (Harold) LeVay, Tracie Thoms (Rent, "Cold Case," The Devil Wears Prada) as Taylor, Tony Award-winner Ruben Santiago-Hudson (Seven Guitars, Lackawanna Blues) as Joe Levay, Rosie Benton (Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Accent on Youth) as Kimber and Condola Rashad (Ruined) as Cheryl.
STICK FLY was developed in a recent co-production last year between the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston and Arena Stage in Washington D.C. The play had its world premiere at Chicago's Congo Square Theatre Company in 2006 and was subsequently performed at theatres including the McCarter Theatre in 2007 and the Matrix Theatre Company in Los Angeles in 2009. Find out what the critics thought of the show's Broadway debut below!
Charles Isherwood, The New York Times: this overstuffed but lively comedy-drama, which opened on Thursday night at the Cort Theater, also signifies a departure for Broadway in its depiction of generational conflict and sexuAl Sparks among a well-to-do contemporary African-American family and friends. Pointed discussions of race and class erupt as often as testy personality clashes...The discovery of the evening is the quietly captivating Ms. Rashad.
Jeremy Gerard, Bloomberg: Diamond has a knack for setting up juicy situations without always knowing how to resolve them. Director Kenny Leon ought to have trimmed a half hour from the play and tightened its focus...Nevertheless, “Stick Fly” is one of my favorite plays of the year. Keep your eyes on Rashad, radiant in the harrowing “Ruined” and a further revelation here.
David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter: As over-written as it is, Diamond’s script has enough amusing lines and perceptive observations -- particularly about the behavior men learn or reject from their fathers -- to keep it engaging. But her characters don’t exactly draw you in, and neither these actors nor the staging help.
Linda Winer, Newsday: Kenny Leon directs six fine actors -- including the superb Condola Rashad as the quietly seething maid's daughter with ambitions, Dulé Hill as the son who'd rather be a novelist than a lawyer, Mekhi Phifer as his brother the womanizing plastic surgeon and Ruben Santiago-Hudson as the patriarch....There's a tight, bright, nasty 90-minute play lurking in this sprawling 2¾-hour work, named after an etymological practice of gluing fast-moving flies on sticks to be magnified. Stuck under a less-than-perfect microscope, they still move.
