Review Roundup: Broadway-Bound AIRLINE HIGHWAY

Steppenwolf Theatre Company continues its 2014/15 subscription season with the world premiere production of Airline Highway, written by Lisa D'Amour (Detroit, How to Build a Forest) and directed by Joe Mantello (The Last Ship, Casa Valentina, Wicked). Steppenwolf's production will be presented by Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) at their Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Broadway in Spring 2015. Airline Highway opened last night, December 14, 2014 and runs through February 8, 2015 in Steppenwolf's Downstairs Theatre (1650 N Halsted St).

In the parking lot of The Hummingbird, a once-glamorous motel on New Orleans' infamous Airline Highway, a group of friends gather. A rag-tag collection of strippers, hustlers and philosophers have come together to celebrate the life of Miss Ruby, an iconic burlesque performer who has requested a funeral before she dies. The party rages through the night as old friends resurface to pay their respects. A world premiere from the author of Detroit, Airline Highway is a boisterous and moving ode to the outcasts that make life a little more interesting.

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

Steven Oxman, Variety: The play doesn't sugarcoat human misery, although it is also filled with wit and humanity and plenty of energy stemming nonstop from an ensemble that doesn't have a weak link. But the work could still reach for a higher climax - for a moment of more explosive ecstatic experience. As of now, it remains just a bit too safe to make the type of splash it will need to make a commercial mark as a serious work on Broadway, where it is headed in 2015 thanks to Manhattan Theater Club. That said, it's a beautiful play, taking us into a world we'd be unlikely to brave on our own, but that has much to teach us.

Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune: Very few playwrights have the acute sense of American place you find in D'Amour's beautiful writing. Especially toward the end, "Airline Highway" is a worthy follow-up to the similarly adroit "Detroit," a Pulitzer Prize finalist about another great city ridden and then mostly abandoned by the country at large. These are both moralistic plays (with similar codas) suggesting we pay more attention to the beautiful urban gardens between sea and shining sea, very much dimmed by human tears.

Photo Credit: Michael Brosilow