All Nighter Off-Broadway Reviews

Natalie Margolin’s All Nighter brilliantly captures the frenetic energy of a group of college women sharing space and mining the complexities of friendship — all over tubs of hummus and notes for the psychology exam. It may be the best portrayal of college girls on stage ever.

Margolin is lucky in keen-eyed director Jaki Bradley and cast, each of whom is thoughtfully and appropriately attired... The playwright having provided each actor with plenty to draw attention to themselves, Frøseth, Liu, Scott, Gallagher, and Lester respond admirably, easily filling Wilson Chin’s perhaps more spacious than necessary luxurious set with their activities.

At its best, All Nighter is a touching paean to female friendship, especially at an age when the “real world,” as the women refer to it, gets closer and closer. It’s a frightening time, especially when you’re 22 and you’re still not sure who you are.

The in-group actresses are serviceably solid in their parts—Frøseth appears least comfortable, playing a character that is also least well-defined—and then Lester cannonballs into the action with a gift of a role that she can play as broad and angsty as she likes. Wilma’s the kind of tumbleweed of unresolved emotion that, in my time, used to be nicknamed a “campus celebrity,” hurtling her way through campus yelling about how she hasn’t slept in days while also making her business everyone else’s, and vice versa. Lester takes the assignment and runs with it, cavorting around the stage in a DIY outfit that anticipates the style of Chappell Roan (the on-point costumes are by Michelle J. Li) while nailing the non sequiturs that Margolin hands her, like, “I want to be a painter… and a Democrat.”