Time Out Theater Review: "Stunning"
By: David Cote - Time Out New York
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"Stunning," the hip, new off-Broadway work compliments of Lincoln Center's emerging playwrights program, lives up to its name. David Cote of Time Out New York filed the following report. Nobody is what they appear to be in "Stunning," the razor-sharp satirical tragedy by David Adjmi. It is the latest work from Lincoln Center Theater's new program, LCT3, which was created to showcase daring new work.
They have succeeded: "Stunning" frequently lives up to its name, offering a brutal yet witty view of groupthink and slippery identity politics among Syrian Jews in Brooklyn.
The main protagonist, Lily, played as a trembling, wide-eyed waif by Cristin Milioti, is a 16-year-old bride who starts to feel out of place in her small, insular Syrian Jewish enclave of Midwood. Her husband, the boorish clothing merchant Ike, is twice her age.
Despite the cold supervision of her bullying older sister, the steely and glamorous Jeanine Serralles, Lily feels alienated. The loneliness is only accentuated by Blanche, a maid Lily hires to keep her ultra-modern house spotless, and with whom Lily falls in love. Blanche, played by Charlayne Woodard, has a Ph.D. and plans to find a job at a university in Chicago. If it seems unlikely that an academic such as Blanche would take a job as a maid, that's just one of Adjmi's twisty tricks.
"Stunning" straddles genres: it's not surreal or absurdist, but it stretches naturalism with grotesque portraits and percussive, multilayered dialogue.
Adjmi explores provocative themes: the discrepancy between social and private self, racism and the politics of personal growth. To bring out these complex ideas, set designer David Korins and the amazing director Anne Kauffman create a world of smooth, reflective, sterile surfaces.
Kauffman and her ace cast, including Danny Mastrogiorgio, Steven Rattazzi and Sas Goldberg, keep the tone perfectly balanced between menace and farce.
There is a lot going on in "Stunning" in terms of formal construction and themes, and not all of it hangs together, especially toward the melodramatic end.
But it still needs to seen. It's the hippest ticket in town and everyone wants to be seen there. Don't you?