Review Roundup: LETTERS OF SURESH Opens Off-Broadway

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Second Stage Theatre's LETTERS OF SURESH by Rajiv Joseph opened last night, Tuesday, October 12. The production features Ali Ahn, Ramiz Monsef, Kellie Overbey and Thom Sesma. Ms. Overbey also appeared in Joseph's play, Animals Out of Paper, which is a companion piece to RG/">RG/">RG/">RGet="newwinddow">Letters of Suresh that had its world Premiere/">Premiere/">Premiere/">Premiere in Second Stage's Uptown Series in 2008.

In RG/">RG/">RG/">RGet="newwinddow">Letters of Suresh, playwright Rajiv Joseph reveals intimate mysteries through a series of letters between strangers, friends, daughters, and lovers - many with little in Common/">Common/">Common/">Common but a hunger for human connection. Sending their hopes and dreams across oceans and years, they seek peace in one another while dreaming of a city once consumed by the scouRG/">RG/">RG/">RGe of war. A companion piece to Joseph's play Animals Out of Paper, RG/">RG/">RG/">RGet="newwinddow">Letters of Suresh is the latest work from the Pulitzer Prize-short listed playwright.

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

Alexis Soloski, The New York Times: Joseph wrote the play before the pandemic, which seems prescient. With everyone homebound and exhausted by Zoom, letter writing experienced a brief vogue. But we can see each other in person now. And as of late summer, we can see live theater, too. "Letters of Suresh," though, mostly withholds the pleasures of dialogue and interaction. It gives us paragraphs, signed sincerely and very truly, instead.

Melissa Rose Bernardo, RG/">RG/">RG/">RGotten-art-form/">New York Stage Review: Joseph's writing is as vivid and poetic as ever, matched by Jiyoun Chang's impressionistic lighting design and Shawn Duan's goRG/">RG/">RG/">RGeous projections (those koi fish!)-even if it sometimes goes over the top. Would an 18-year-old, even an artist, the self-professed "genius at origami" Suresh, pour out lines like "That woman who taught me, my mentor, she mended something in me. But in doing that, she also opened something else up"?

David Finkle, New York Stage Review: Because Letters of Suresh is such a quiet, intermissionless 90-minute piece, it's difficult to pinpoint its uRG/">RG/">RG/">RGent effectiveness. To start, much can be attributed to how all four actors are in tune with the script. Maybe even more is due to the quality the play has of a silent prayer Joseph is sending up on behalf of the audience. (The sound design and original music are by Charles Coes and Rob/">Rob/">Rob/">Roberts/">Nathan Rob/">Rob/">Rob/">Roberts/">A. Rob/">Rob/">Rob/">Roberts.) Maybe Letters of Suresh holds sway, at least in part, because it recalls the value letters have always had-until now?-of bringing people together.

Juan Michael Porter II, New York Theatre Guide: In theatre, an oft-cited rule is that acting is reacting. So what are the characters of playwright Rajiv Joseph's Letters to Suresh to do when all they've Bee/">Bee/">Bee/">Been tasked with is reciting the contents of their exposition-heavy letters aloud in direct address to the audience? The answer is to serve as talking heads for material that feels better suited for an article in The New Yorker than it does for an Off-Broadway play.

Rob/">Rob/">Rob/">Robert Hofler, The Wrap: May Adrales' direction is enhanced by Shawn Duan's goRG/">RG/">RG/">RGeous projection design, which gives the production its only sense of motion. Adrales leaves Monsef adrift to play Suresh as if he were hyperactive and mentally challenged, even though he is a self-professed genius. When we first meet him, Suresh is also only 18 years old, an age in no way projected by Monsef. Only later are we told what career Suresh chooses in his adult life, where he's unquestionably a genius and not a very nice one.