Review Roundup: THE HUMANS at Roundabout Theatre Company

Roundabout Theatre Company's production of Stephen Karam's The Humans featuring Cassie Beck,Reed Birney, Jayne Houdyshell, Lauren Klein, Arian Moayed and Sarah Steele, began preview performances on Wednesday, September 30, 2015, and opened last night, October 25, 2015.

This is a limited engagement through Sunday, December 27, 2015, Off-Broadway at the Laura PelsTheatre in the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre (111 West 46th Street). For more information, please visit Roundabout Theatre Company's website at roundabouttheatre.org.

Breaking with tradition, Erik Blake (Birney) has brought his Pennsylvania family to celebrate Thanksgiving at his daughter's apartment in lower Manhattan. As darkness falls outside the ramshackle pre-war duplex, eerie things start to go bump in the night. Soon, family tensions reach a boiling point... and the hilarity, heart and horrors of the Blake clan are exposed. A fresh look at the mysteries of the modern American family, this strikingly witty new play reminds us that we all have our fears, but we don't have to face them alone.

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

Charles Isherwood, New York Times: All the actors in "The Humans" are at their best. Ms. Houdyshell's bubbly humor and warmth are, as always, immensely pleasurable; like Mr. Birney, she's incapable of a dishonest word or action. Ms. Beck and Ms. Steele have a nice sisterly rapport, as the women share laughs over their mother's strange barrage of texts and emails. ("You don't have to text her every time a lesbian kills herself," Brigid says, referring to a recent dispatch from Mom to Aimee.) Mr. Moayed has one of the smaller roles, but he provides Rich with an amiable gravity and intimations of emotional troubles he once faced.

Linda Winer, Newsday: It starts as just another family play on Thanksgiving. The aging dad worries about money, one of the two grown daughters moans about her student debt, the mother wheedles both of them on the benefits of marriage. Oh, and Granny -- called Momo -- has dementia and will probably not make another holiday. But Stephen Karam is not just another playwright and "The Humans," his third play nurtured under the Roundabout Theatre's Off-Broadway wing, dares to assemble the usual bickering and raw nerves for what at first seems a hackneyed situation. In just 90 minutes of overlapping wit, tenderness and blistering brutality, however, Karam, director Joe Mantello and six expert actors -- including the masterly Reed Birney and Jayne Houdyshell as the mother and father -- walk us up to the edge of the abyss.

Matt Windman, amNY: Devised as a single scene, "The Humans" is a series of portraits of emotionally and physically damaged individuals, such as Erik, who at 60 is out of work, having marriage difficulties, experiencing back pain and taking care of his elderly mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer's; and Erik's 34-year-old daughter Aimee, who just lost her longtime girlfriend and is dealing with a serious stomach condition that has derailed her legal career.

Jennifer Farrar, Associated Press: Mantello expertly stages overlapping conversations in different rooms on the two-level set where David Zinn has created an extra-creaky old Manhattan apartment building. This basement has eerie overtones, skillfully enhanced by Justin Townsend's flickering lighting and Fitz Patton's sound design. Loud crashing sounds above add to an increasingly melodramatic ambiance. Even if the Blakes can't quite keep all the harsh realities of life at bay, Karam's empathetic rendering of a family enduring setbacks leaves the audience hopeful that they will find strength in their love for one another.

Robert Hofler, The Wrap: Early in his play, Karam has Richard tell a favorite monster story in which the humans are the ones to fear. They're the creatures, after all, who are always trying to kill off the monsters, and usually they succeed. The Blakes are obsessed with hurricanes and terrorist attacks when it's the day-to-day worries about unemployment, illness, romance, and money that are the real horror show. Those problems don't sound as scary as zombies and vampires, but the suspense in "The Humans" builds right up to the moment that the apartment lights go out for good.

Jeremy Gerard, Deadline: The Humans - the title tells us everything we need to know about the author's empathy for these folks - is tremendously exciting theater. Karam's fine sophomore play Sons Of The Prophet was a Pulitzer finalist; The Humanstakes him to an even higher level, and it deserves a wider audience. You won't see a better play this year.

Jesse Green, Vulture: Great plays are usually great in one of two ways. Either they are culminating examples of existing ideas, or groundbreaking examples of new things entirely. The Humans, by Stephen Karam, at first seems like it will be one of the former. It situates itself squarely in the long-established theatrical tradition of family-at-the-holidays plays, and is absolutely, relentlessly gripping as such. That's no small achievement, given the familiarity of the genre, which goes back at least as far as Thornton Wilder's 1931 one-act The Long Christmas Dinner and has at this point devolved into a young playwright's throat-clearing exercise, in which a lot of autobiographical bile gets expectorated.

Melissa Rose Bernardo, Entertainment Weekly: What makes The Humans so extraordinary is Karam's spot-on rendering of perfectly ordinary characters: the way Brigid's dad Erik (Reed Birney, in peak Everyman form) announces the score of the Lions game as if everyone was waiting to hear it. How her mom Deirdre (Jayne Houdyshell, underplaying beautifully), who's "back on Weight Watchers," can't resist picking at the appetizers in front of her. The torturous because-it's-the-holidays call we overhear her sister, Aimee (Cassie Beck), placing to her ex-girlfriend. The superior tone 26-year-old Brigid adopts when expounding on such topics as superfoods, juicing, and spa days. The highbrow dessert tray that 38-year-old Richard presents: rugelach, vanilla cupcakes, and a chocolate croissant. The pre-dinner discussion of assorted illness and ailments - so-and-so's knee replacements, so-and-so's cancer. Has Karam been eavesdropping on my Christmas dinners?

David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter: While Karam mostly steers away from the kind of big, explosively cathartic moments that often shape such dramatic scenarios, his play has stirring emotional moments - Aimee's needy phone call to her ex, overheard by Erik; a dinner-table reading of an email from Momo, written as the early signs of Alzheimer's were taking hold; a harrowing outburst from the old woman that destroys the last vestiges of calm. There's also a shot of infectious joy when Momo recalls the words of a Thanksgiving prayer and joins in, emerging from her solitary fog. It's tremendously moving watching the other family members rally to that momentary illusion that all is as it once was.

Photo Credit: Joan Marcus