Review Roundup: Critics Weigh In On I'M REVOLTING At Atlantic Theater Company

Atlantic Theater Company's world premiere production of I'm Revolting, written by Gracie Gardner, and directed by Knud Adams, is running now through Sunday, October 16th, 2022 Off-Broadway at the Linda Gross Theater (336 West 20th Street). Read reviews below!

I'm Revolting features Tony Award nominee Gabby Beans (The Skin of Our Teeth), Bartley Booz (Hamlet/Oresteia), Patrice Johnson Chevannes (Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven), Laura Esterman (The Woman's Party), Glenn Fitzgerald (The True), Peter Gerety (The Lieutenant of Inishmore), Emily Cass McDonnell (Bodies They Ritual), Alicia Pilgrim (Cullud Wattah), and Patrick Vaill (Oklahoma!).

At a skin cancer clinic in NYC (not the famous one), patients wait to find out how much of themselves they're about to lose. Atlantic Theater Company is welcoming back Drama Desk Award nominee Knud Adams (English) teaming up with Relentless Award winner Gracie Gardner for her Off-Broadway debut.

I'm Revolting features scenic design by Marsha Ginsberg, costume design by Enver Chakartash, lighting design by Kate McGee, sound design by Bray Poor, and casting by The Telsey Office: William Cantler, CSA; Destiny Lilly, CSA. Alex H. Hajjar will serve as production stage manager.

Maya Phillips, The New York Times: With another pandemic winter on the horizon, it's hard not to imagine all of the ways our physical health determines the shape and quality of our lives and reveals the most intimate facets of ourselves. That's what I suspect the playwright Gracie Gardner ("Athena"), who is also an E.M.T., was aiming to get at in her new play, "I'm Revolting," which opened Wednesday night at the Linda Gross Theater. But despite the show's attempts to tell a moving story about illness, the body and the U.S. health care system, this Atlantic Theater Company production fails to make a compelling work of theater out of the issues facing patients in the waiting room of a skin cancer clinic.

Melissa Rose Bernardo, New York Stage Review: There are few places more uncomfortable than a doctor's office waiting room. The chairs are stiff, the temperature is never right (either bone-chillingly cold or swelteringly hot, no in between), and it's always overcrowded. No one wants to be there-whether it's for a check-up, an ailment, or some kind of procedure. So there's tension, and potential conflict, built into I'm Revolting simply by virtue of its setting: Gracie Gardner's play, now in its world premiere at the Atlantic Theater Co., takes place entirely in an outpatient surgical waiting room, where people await treatment for various types of skin cancer.

Thom Geier, The Wrap: Constrained by her format and her running time, Gardner can offer little more than a skin-deep look at modern medicine and how ordinary patients respond to it. (There are flashes of insight - apparently NYC's famed Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center really does have a Yelp rating - two and a half stars, most recently.) Instead, "I'm Revolting" mostly just kills time.

Tim Teeman, The Daily Beast: Gardner, Adams, and all the performers capture the ebb and flow of gallows humor, trauma, mundanity, and pivotal decision-making of the day with precision. In its focus on a group of people who are on varying edges and turning points, it reminded this critic-in structure and composition-of the Atlantic's last much-deserved success, English. They are not the same play thematically, but both are beautifully written and directed character studies-both singular and collective.

Gillian Russo, New York Theatre Guide: It's at this point that I'm Revolting steers out of dark comedy territory and just gets dark. The final 20 minutes are harrowing, but they reveal the clever depth of the play's title. Every character is revolting in some way - some in the rebellious sense, revolting against either doctors or their loved ones' counsel. All the cancer patients have cells "revolting," as Paula flippantly puts it, against their own bodies. Some characters fear being "revolting" in the ugly, disgusting sense as a result of their cancer. Some of those fears are realized. The play may upset those who have been in its characters' position. For anyone else looking for sharp comedy, genuinely shocking dramatic twists, and excellent performances, I'm Revolting is a must-see.