Review Roundup: A KNOCK ON THE ROOF Opens at NYTW
A Knock on the Roof will play a limited run through February 16, 2025.
New York Theatre Workshop just celebrated opening night of A Knock on the Roof, written by Khawla Ibraheem, and directed by Obie Award winner and NYTW Usual Suspect Oliver Butler. A co-production with piece by piece productions, A Knock on the Roof is presented in partnership with Under the Radar.
Set the timer. The everyday existence of a mother during a sweltering summer vacation: prepare meals, pack the bag, run the drill, repeat. With a dry wit and the determination of an Olympian, Mariam meticulously practices for the run of her life—the dreaded knock on the roof.
Let's see what the critics are saying about the new play...
Michael Sommers, New York Stage Review: A Knock on the Roof is strong stuff. The well-written monologue’s repetitive motifs of packing and running propel both Mariam’s harried narrative and Ibraheem’s urgent performance. In depicting a seemingly frail young woman in baggy mom jeans and white running shoes who turns obsessive in her pursuit of safety, Ibraheem creates the voices of Mariam as well as her several loved ones. Possessing a rich, alto voice matching her dark-eyed looks, Ibraheem speaks with a Middle Eastern accent that may be challenging for some members of the audience to comprehend, likely depending on where they are seated at New York Theatre Workshop. (During certain passages of the performance, I was losing every fourth or fifth word.)
Beatrice Onions, New York Theatre Guide: Built on a foundation of obsession, instinct, and dread, A Knock on The Roof unfolds as a relentless monologue, barraging the audience with Mariam’s real-time commentary of everyday life. While this unyielding pace mirrors the terror of the knock, a pause within the text could let the audience absorb its weight fully.
Elysa Gardner, New York Sun: Ms. Ibraheem conceived the play, which is set in Gaza and traces a stream of Israeli military operations, in 2014, when another war was raging in the territory. Yet it’s impossible to watch Ms. Ibraheem’s heroine, Mariam, describe these actions — bombings, which grow ever closer and more frequent — without thinking of the cataclysmic events that have unfolded there over the past 16 months.
Loren Noveck, Exeunt: It’s all building to that inevitable moment when the knock will come, when the running will begin. And yet that moment, despite a sickening plot twist, thuddingly effective and faintly manipulative all at once, is not what struck me most deeply in A Knock on the Roof. Rather, it’s the monologue about waiting that I quoted earlier: “Here in Gaza, nothing is yours. You are absolutely looted. The sieged land besieging you. Time feels endless but none of it belongs to you.” It’s the sense of the life Mariam could have–should have–had.
Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: Palestinian writer-actress Khawla Ibraheem tugs at the heartstrings in her Gaza-set monologue A Knock on the Roof, which opened Monday at the New York Theatre Workshop, recounting the plight of a young mother in an unnamed Gaza city that is being subjected to repeated attacks by the Israeli military that have leveled nearby buildings. Ibraheem’s one-woman show is a curious exercise — a fictionalized account of the psychological effects of wartime that is oddly divorced from the politics of the region.
Average Rating: 70.0%
