Review Roundup: What Did the Critics Think of WILD GOOSE DREAMS

The Public celebrated its opening night of Wild Goose Dreams last night, November 14.

This marks the New York premiere of Wild Goose Dreams, written by Hansol Jung and directed by Tony Award nominee Leigh Silverman.

The complete cast of Wild Goose Dreamsfeatures Dan Domingues (Chorus), Lulu Fall(Digital Nanhee/Chorus), Kendyl Ito(Heejin/Chorus),Francis Jue(Father), Peter Kim (Guk Minsung), Michelle Krusiec (Yoo Nanhee), Jaygee Macapugay (Wife/Chorus), Joél Pérez (Digital Minsung/Chorus), Jamar Williams (Chorus), and Katrina Yaukey (Chorus).

WILD GOOSE DREAMS returns to The Public after its initial run in Public Studio in a co-production with La Jolla Playhouse, where it had a critically-acclaimed run last season. Minsung is a "goose father," a South Korean man whose wife and daughter have moved to America for a better life. Deeply lonely, he escapes onto the internet and meets Nanhee, a young defector forced to leave her family behind in North Korea. Amidst the endless noise of the modern world, where likes and shares have taken the place of love and touch, Minsung and Nanhee try their best to be real for each other. But after a lifetime of division and separation, is connection possible? Tony nominee Leigh Silverman directs this strikingly original play with music, about two people from two cultures forced to choose between family and freedom.

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

Ben Brantley, The New York Times: Ms. Jung, a writer of industrious imagination,has a poet's gift for sustaining and interlinking motifs and metaphor. Still, the piling up of incidents and images and subplots has a congestive effect here, blurring our focus and blunting our emotional responses.

Sara Holdren, Vulture: Jung's writing always has a light touch, even when things get heavy, and Silverman is doing sensitive work with the cast, especially Krusiec and Kim - who both have the challenge of suspending heartache beneath a keeping-it-together surface - and with Joel Perez and Lulu Fall, who have the more fun job of playing their online avatars.

Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter: The simple tale, which eventually ends in tragedy, is quietly touching in its tender depiction of the two emotionally fragile souls. Unfortunately, the playwright overwhelms her slight story with overelaborate theatrical gimmickry. A Greek chorus of sorts constantly intrudes on the action, chanting and singing vocal equivalents to cellphone ringing, emojis and various internet functions, to distracting and quickly annoying effect. They don sparkly gold uniforms and perform a musical number to signify the main characters having sex, also appearing as a military marching band. Add to that the play's frequently surreal elements, such as when Nanhee imagines a penguin sticking its head out of a toilet, and the preciousness starts to become intolerable.

Helen Shaw, TimeOutNY: Wild Goose Dreams is a tricky play, full of both richness and distraction. The core story of Nanhee and Minsung is artfully constructed: Jung has written characters that complement each other exactly yet also seem organic, messy and real. This beautiful center, though, is often obscured by the stagey "online" and dream elements; the chorus and the penguin stuff feel extraneous and cutesy. Krusiec works hard to show us Nanhee's desperation and fraying sanity (she often hallucinates), but the text keeps cracking "this is how we write emails" jokes. Still, director Leigh Silverman draws keen, vivid performances from Krusiec and Kim, and their interpersonal drama is quite moving in its combination of stunned sadness and gallows humor.

Robert Hofler, The Wrap: Director Leigh Silverman busies the stage with Keith Parham's flashy lighting design, as well as Clint Ramos's colorful set design, which puts the whole show inside a Seoul comic-book store even though only one scene is set in a Seoul comic-book store. "Wild Goose Dreams" means to tell us that it's tough to forge personal relationships in a world of machines. Unfortunately, that always-lively computer chorus is far more engaging than Nanhee and Minsung.

Tim Teeman, The Daily Beast: Visually, Wild Goose Dreams is one of the most arresting pieces of theatre in New York City this autumn. Clint Ramos' all-encompassing design at The Public Theater's Martinson Hall is a riotous, vivid mash-up of graffiti, old photographs, neon signs, and detailed patterns, including all over the pillars.

Photo Credit: Joan Marcus