Review Roundup: Anne Washburn's ANTLIA PNEUMATICA Opens Off-Broadway

Playwrights Horizons' world premiere production of ANTLIA PNEUMATICA, a new play by Anne Washburn, directed by two-time Obie Award winner Ken Rus Schmoll, officially opens tonight, April 4, at Playwrights Horizons' Peter Jay Sharp Theater, for a limited engagement through Sunday, April 24.

The cast features Obie Award winner Rob Campbell, Nat DeWolf, Crystal Finn, Obie Award winner April Matthis ,Annie Parisse and Maria Striar.

In a ranch house deep in Texas Hill Country, a once tight-knit group of friends reunites to bury one of their own. But as they look backward through their lives, it becomes clear they've lost more than just their old pal. In this haunting new play from Anne Washburn, the boundaries between then and now grow disarmingly blurry as these estranged friends confront their slippery past.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Ben Brantley, The New York Times: I don't think it's too big a spoiler to reveal that there's a supernatural dimension to "Antlia Pneumatica," which has been directed with a mix of bright whimsy and dark portentousness by Ken Rus Schmoll and features a likable cast led with grace by Annie Parisse. But it is definitely a downer to report that the play's ghost story feels as leaden and ultimately unsurprising as its collective portrait of midlife doubts in the face of mortality. As she demonstrated in the thrilling "Mr. Burns" and last season's "10 Out of 12," Ms. Washburn is a writer of questing imagination and convention-bending technique. Here, however, she seems to have gotten lost between the traditional and experimental sides of her craft, never finding a comfortable voice that accommodates both.

Jennifer Farrar, Associated Press: Ghosts from our past are often in our minds, but thinking they walk among us is another story. Ann Washburn provides a realistic, disarming ghost tale, invigorated with ruminations about time and space, in her new play, "Antlia Pneumatica." A quietly unsettling production directed by Ken Rus Schmoll premiered off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons Monday..."Antlia Pneumatica" is a tender examination of everyday concerns, including lapsed friendships, regrets, parenting and death, with dark humor and some supernatural undertones. Scenes of shared memories between the friends are effectively given ritualistic, elegiac treatments.

Marilyn Stasio, Variety: Anne Washburn writes weird plays, and "Antlia Pneumatica" is no exception, although it does seem more grounded in reality than her post-apocalyptic "Mr. Burns." In this world premiere at Playwrights Horizons, childhood friends who meet over a funeral feast (see: "The Big Chill") to eulogize a departed member of their group waste considerable stage time catching up on other old friends we never meet. And once they start to ponder the astrophysical mysteries of time and space, they become lost in the stars, leaving us to wonder if we dreamed them all up...It sounds like an audience challenge, trying to identify the ghosts among the dreamers. But with the exception of Nina, the characters are so superficially drawn, there's not enough substance to them to distinguish the living from the dead.

Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter: [Washburn's] latest effort...is at times similarly inventive in its approach. So it's ironic that what Antlia Pneumatica most strongly suggests is the voice of a naturalistic writer struggling to break free...To a significant degree, Antlia Pneumatica...has a fairly conventional feel. The characters engage in witty, sometimes pointed bantering...But it's also evident that things are not quite as they seem...That the proceedings are tonally inconsistent and the plotting full of holes only adds to the overall frustration. That's a shame, because the play is enjoyable for long stretches, thanks to its witty dialogue and well-drawn characterizations. Under the ambitious direction of Ken Rus Schmoll...the actors deliver fine performances.

David Cote, Time Out NY: First let's get that pesky title out of the way: Antlia Pneumatica is Latin for "air pump." It's also the name of a constellation mapped by French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in a book published posthumously in 1763. Sorry not to preface that with "spoiler alert," but I'm guessing you're still confused. In fact, I could recount the entire plot of Anne Washburn's elegantly weird play about friendship and memory without lessening its mystery a jot. Just as Lacaille reorganized his perception of dots of light, imaginatively connecting stars to suggest an air pump, so we may catch hold of ribbons of information that Washburn unspools over us and weave our own fabric of meaning.

Robert Hofler, TheWrap: Beware of plays with coy, obscure titles that are clumsily explained shortly before the final curtain...Does the Antlia Pneumatica exist? Or is it a figment of Adrian and de La Caille's imagination? And can the same be said for all those newly discovered Nina constellations? Washburn asks many such questions in her play, and her characters answer almost all of them for us. What is the nature of time, imagination, reality, binge-eating, you name it...Washburn captures the awkward humor of people trying to play catch up with their collective past. She and her director, Ken Rus Schmoll, are effective when scenes feature the witty banter between Nina and the other female characters...The male characters are much less successfully drawn.

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Photo Credit: Joan Marcus

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