Review Roundup: THE RIPPLE, THE WAVE THAT CARRIED ME HOME Off-Broadway

Playwrights Horizons is presenting Christina Anderson’s “the ripple, the wave that carried me home,” directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene, through Nov. 29, 2026, at the Judith O. Rubin Theater in New York City.

It’s 1960s Kansas, and Janice’s parents are fighting for the integration of public swimming pools — a fierce civil rights struggle that overshadows her childhood and drives a wedge between Janice and her family. It’s also thirty years later, when Janice is asked to speak at a ceremony honoring her father, forced to reckon with the scars of a past she has tried to forget. A piercing, theatrically vivid story about the personal toll of fighting for justice, and the ultimate challenge of forgiveness. 

The production is written by Anderson and directed by Greene. The cast features Marinda Anderson, Alana Raquel Bowers, Biko Eisen-Martin and Crystal Lucas-Perry. See what the critics are saying…

Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: Christina Anderson’s play captures how the act of remembrance can roil the waters of our mind, enabling us to confront episodes we’ve strenuously avoided and to re-examine others that we might not have seen quite so clearly in younger versions of ourselves. There’s an undeniable power to her lyricism, and to the ways this production brings her ideas to the surface with theatrical originality. the ripple, the wave that carried me home is worth the plunge.

Amelia Merrill, New York Theatre Guide: A common problem with plays that try to knead a pretty resolution from the dough of memory is a too-fluid concept of time: The characters have decades of it to either burden them or make them forget what they were so upset about in the first place.

Loren Noveck, ExeuntNYC: There are times the metaphor threatens to drown the narrative, where we lose sight of character in the service of the theme, but it’s still the thing Anderson keeps circling back to, the underground stream, if you will, that even when covered over, keeps rushing through. But if the script sometimes strains a little to marry plot and structure, subtext and text, the production’s energy lifts the whole.

Average Rating: 73.3%