Review Roundup: MISS YOU LIKE HELL at the Public Theater

The complete cast for Miss You Like Hell includes Marinda Anderson(Ensemble), Danny Bolero (Manuel), Andrew Cristi (Ensemble), Latoya Edwards (Pearl), Shawna M. Hamic(Ensemble), Marcus Paul James(Ensemble), Gizel Jiménez (Olivia), David Patrick Kelly(Higgins), Michael Mulheren (Mo), Daphne Rubin-Vega (Beatriz), and Martín Solá (Manuel Understudy).

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

Jesse Green, New York Times: It may be that "Miss You Like Hell," which evolved from Ms. Hudes's 2009 drama "26 Miles" and had its premiere as a musical at the La Jolla Playhouse in 2016, just needs more time. Certainly events have caught up with (and in some ways outrun) its tear-jerking story, which is pre-emptively set in 2014, before the Trump presidency. But you can't set the audience in 2014; when an officer wearing an ICE uniform appears onstage, everyone knows what nightmare is coming. Of course, part of Ms. Hudes's plan is to make us understand that people like Beatriz - whose lives have been spent, as one smart lyric has it, looking over their shoulders - always did. The rest of us are just catching up.

Michael Dale, BroadwayWorld: While the detours can get a little sluggish, Miss You Like Hell is gripping stuff when focused on Beatriz and Olivia, especially with Rubin-Vega and Jiménez giving such strong performances. And its topicality adds to the impact.

Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter: The creators of the new musical being presented at The Public Theater want to have it both ways. This timely show addresses such hot-button societal issues as teen suicidal depression and the deportation of undocumented immigrants. But in an effort to be as entertaining as impactful, it does so in a cutesy, cloying manner that undercuts the important messages being imparted. Miss You Like Hell misses its mark, although not for want of desperately trying.

Joe Dziemianowicz, NY Daily News: Songs are mostly so-so and sometimes better, but the production is too much and too little at the same time. On the plus side, there are richly emotional performances all around.

Frank Rizzo, Variety: The production, staged by Lear deBessonet, is low-tech to a fault, with an undistinguished set, basic choreography/movement and minimal use of an ensemble. However, singer-songwriter Erin McKeown makes an impressive stage debut with music that is eclectic and appealing, though the lyrics she co-wrote with Hudes are too often an odd mix of fleeting grace and awkwardness.

Raven Snook, TimeOut NY: The show is quite a tearjerker when it sticks to the fraught mother-daughter relationship at its core, with tuneful folk-rock songs that touch on depression, heritage and family (plus a quirky ode to the majesty of Yellowstone, led by Latoya Edwards's charming park ranger). But after hitting a few bumps on the highway, Hudes's book loses focus and crashes into cliché. Lear deBessonet's staging on a mostly empty set is fluid, and it's a treat to spend time with complex Latinx characters who buck stereotypes. But although Miss You Like Hell takes us on a resonant journey, its trajectory needs adjusting.

Sara Holdren, Vulture: I really wanted to like Miss You Like Hell. Maybe that's a risky thing to admit, since it acknowledges that we - critics, humans - don't show up to plays in pristine states of impartiality. Then again, does anyone really believe that we do? I wanted to like the show because in so many ways, it felt like a step in an exciting direction. Almost exactly a year ago, I went to see a new musical in the Public's Newman Theater that didn't sit right with me - among other reasons, for its myopic presentation of a supposedly "feminist" narrative by a production team composed almost entirely of men. Now, a year later, here's Miss You Like Hell, a new musical about a mother and daughter that was written, scored, and directed by women - a musical whose heroine kneels on the floor in the show's opening moments and sings, "Be with me, ancestors / Be with me, witchy witches / I call upon the Feminine Divine / Yo, back me up bitches!"

Robert Hofler, The Wrap: The major flat tire along the way is the song "My Bell's Been Rung," sung by the plaid- and army-fatigue-wearing same-sex couple, who wouldn't be caught dead doing soft shoe. And somewhere between Nebraska and Wyoming, "Miss You Like Hell" could use an intermission. Road trips, especially ones as fraught as this one, need a rest stop. DeBessonet's direction is nearly as tireless as her two heroines. Walking into The Public Theater, I thought "Miss You Like Hell" was a lame title for a musical. When Jimenez's Olivia sings that title song at the end of this road trip, however, "Miss You Like Hell" suddenly sounded pitch perfect.

Tim Teeman, Daily Beast: Rubin-Vega and Jimenéz work hard too to make their characters and stories cohere, against the scattered material and bare staging, and there are some moving moments as the impact of Beatriz's likely fate becomes apparent-particularly in the closing scene. The punch and impact of a defiantly and realistically unhappy ending is bracing. And finally in that moment, for the first time in 90 minutes, we feel as if we are outside, under the sky and in the heart of America, rather than facing the sparsely furnished stage of a New York Theater.

Photo Credit: Joan Marcus