Review Roundup: HEAD OF PASSES, Starring Phylicia Rashad, Opens at The Public

The Public Theater presents the New York premiere of Head of Passes, part of Oskar Eustis' 10th anniversary season. Written by Tarell Alvin McCraney and directed by Tina Landau, Head of Passes officially opens tonight, Monday, March 28, and will now run an additional week through Sunday, April 24, 2016.

HEAD OF PASSES features Alana Arenas (Cookie), Francois Battiste (Aubrey), Kyle Beltran (Crier), J. Bernard Calloway (Spencer), John Earl Jelks (Creaker Johnson), Robert Joy (Dr. Anderson), Phylicia Rashad (Shelah), and Arnetia Walker (Mae).

Tarell Alvin McCraney has written a poetic and contemporary parable inspired by the Book of Job. At the mouth of the Mississippi River, Shelah's family and friends have come to celebrate her birthday and save her from a leaking roof but unexpected events turn the reunion into the ultimate test of faith and love. As her world seems to collapse around her, Shelah must fight to survive the rising flood of life's greatest challenges.

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

Ben Brantley, The New York Times: ...n her remarkable, pull-out-all-the-stops performance in Tarell Alvin McCraney's "Head of Passes"...Ms. Rashad gives the impression that she could definitely hold her own on Shakespeare's blasted heath. Portraying a sorely tested Southern matriarch, she can be found railing against God and the elements with a harrowingly Lear-like rage...what Mr. McCraney...is doing here is tearing down the warm and cozy house of feel-good African-American family portraits...you'll look back and marvel at how Mr. McCraney and this expert production team...have set you up. That's partly the art of Ms. Landau...and her top-drawer cast...Ultimately, though, it's Ms. Rashad's deeply felt, expertly shaded Shelah that gives the play its essential emotional continuity.

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter: Despite its conventional beginnings, this is another adventurous work from McCraney, pondering serious theological questions pertaining to the eternal, unanswerable mysteries of random punishment. But structurally, it's problematic. Although Rashad pours monumental anger and anguish into her sustained aria of pain, her performance ends up being more powerful in terms of technique than feeling. The play is unwieldy, its epic, elemental developments springing inorganically from the psychological realism of the setup. As Shelah wrestles with her suffering, alone and comfortless, Head of Passes becomes a freeform performance piece, a rambling discourse on faith unhitched from the careful character building of the first act. It neutralizes the emotional impact of the story's human losses...However, McCraney's distinctive dialogue ensures that the drama remains absorbing, and Landau directs the strong cast with a keen ear for the musical rhythms and idiomatic quirks of black Louisiana speech.

Linda Winer, Newsday: If Phylicia Rashad had not already taken us on formidable journeys through the world of August Wilson and so many other formidable dramas, it would be tempting to call Shelah, the matriarch in "Head of Passes," the role of a lifetime. In fact, it is hard to imagine Tarell Alvin McCraney's most atypical adventure without Rashad at the center of his updated Book of Job...the roiling family tragedy is now dominated by her kaleidoscopic portrayal of this righteous, dying woman and her struggle with a cruel God.

Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Daily News: When it rains, it pours. That goes literally and figuratively in "Head of Passes," an affecting but uneven saga of suffering and faith...As in his earlier dramas "The Brother/Sister Plays" and "Choir Boy," McCraney's dialogue is a potent blend of the plainspoken and poetic. The mix works well with the themes the author is chasing. The cast and production, especially the shape-shifting set, impress under direction by Tina Landau. But on the downside, "Head of Passes" doesn't sidestep cliches. It can also come across as overwrought and windy. Still, Rashad's gutsy, go-for-it performance as a woman whose blind faith has led her tragically to inaction is something to believe in.

Robert Hofler, TheWrap: Tarell Alvin McCraney knows how to whip up a big dramatic scene and make it play on stage. He accomplishes it whether he's writing for many actors, two actors, or just one. In his new play "Head of Passes"...there are many such moments of high drama that grab and hold the attention...Rashad and Arenas are simply brilliant. Rashad can be very grand on stage and McCraney has written Shelah to be very grand. Rashad, however, puts that grandeur aside for her character's moments with Cookie to reveal a deeply caring, contrite woman...Unfortunately, this playwright's flair for comedy deserts him in the plague of death that visits the crumbling house of Shelah. This isn't tragedy. This is creaky melodrama of the David Belasco variety, and Tina Landau's direction and G.W. Mercier's scenic design push it into that unfortunate arena. What's needed here is something much more figurative, if not downright surreal.

Jesse Green, Vulture: Much of the second half of the play amounts to a dramatic monologue in which she brutally interrogates her own faith and somehow finds it lacking...This material is blisteringly delivered by Phylicia Rashad, whose natural grandness is used to excellent effect, especially as it collapses. But a little of this goes a long way, and lacking a visible conflict beyond what Rashad can conjure out of thin air, the play becomes more and more abstract...Still, the bigger problem with Head of Passes isn't style but content. In trying to humanize the great and mysterious parable, McCraney has set himself a challenge surely no playwright could meet.

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Photo Credit: Joan Marcus