Weather 
Following its run at St. Luke’s Theatre, Eliya Smith’s Dad Don’t Read This transferred to Greenwich House Theater, and is now open. Performances will continue through July 11. Read the reviews below!
Directed by Chloe Claudel, this world premiere features performances by Drama Desk winner Amalia Yoo (John Proctor is the Villain), Renée-Nicole Powell (Grief Camp), Sophie Rossman, and Kayta Thomas.
Dad Don’t Read This is set in suburban Central Ohio, where four girls meet weekly for a sleepover. They talk and sleep and play The Sims, a computer game that simulates real life, on a laptop. They gossip, snack, and attempt to get drunk. They strive to fulfill their needs, struggle to understand the relationship between doing and being seen, and begin to suspect they don’t have a whole lot of agency. Wait, nevermind; that’s The Sims.
Helen Shaw, The New York Times: Smith has written about young people in extremis before: Her “Grief Camp” at Atlantic Theater Company dealt with bereaved children having a good time, often in spite of their own fluctuating will. This play, though, feels like an advance. Her naturalistic dramatic voice — a still-sticky adolescent mixture of wild feeling and zoned-out alienation — comes into better focus here, thanks to the loose, swaggering realism generated by the director, Chloe Claudel.
Loren Noveck, Exeunt: Dad Don’t Read This is messy and raw and doesn’t really go anywhere, but the fierce energy of its voice and its sharply observed characters–and particularly those moments where the play’s casually realist surface cracks open to reveal a weirder sense of narrative time or a stunning, mystifying image–will keep it in my mind for a long time.
Steven Suskin, New York Stage Review: You’ll likely leave Barrow Street impressed by what you’ve seen and surely by the performers. But maybe with only a hazy understanding of what the playwright intended (which was certainly not the case with the more fully realized Wolves, Dance Nation, and John Proctor). That said, Dad Don’t Read This is highly entertaining and Smith impresses as a playwright ready to break through.
Kyle Turner, New York Theatre Guide: Dad Don’t Read This is fueled by the intensity of these small moments that accumulate: how you tell your friends things, the tiny misunderstandings that create an ever-growing wedge, the petty jealousies of who hangs out with whom and when, the thrill of dancing around in your room, the feverish anticipation of hearing something new about the person at school whom you all dislike (or maybe not). It’s like we’re peeking into moments we shouldn’t: There’s an intoxicating danger to listening to young girls break up and make up, these tiny moments representative of the choices they make to become themselves.
Average Rating: 92.5%
.
