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Second Stage Theater’s world premiere production of The Visitors is playing Off-Broadway at the Pershing Square Signature Center. Reviews are coming in for the new comedy-drama by Bryna Turner, directed by Jenna Worsham. Find out what critics are saying below!
The production stars Esco Jouléy, Celie Keenan-Bolger, Will Pullen, Mary Wiseman, and Danny Wolohan.
The Visitors follows Joanna, a woman in her mid-thirties who is eager to become a parent. When she invites her three siblings to her New York City apartment to ask them for an unexpected favor, the gathering forces them to confront their relationships and rediscover one another as adults.
The world premiere explores the complexities of family, adulthood, and the challenge of truly knowing the people who have been part of our lives the longest.
Read the reviews for The Visitors below!
Michael Sommers, New York Stage Review: For its greater part, mostly humorous conversations naturally will flow through nine scenes moving inevitably towards sharper confrontations. The Visitors is a relatable comedy-drama, with minor reservations.
Allison Considine, New York Theatre Guide: Jenna Worsham deftly directs the play’s bait-and-switches, including several a-ha moments in the first scene that frame the characters’ relationships to one another. It’s a clever, sometimes tricky device that could easily feel deceptive. Here, though, it becomes an invitation — and a welcome one.
James Wilson, Talkin’ Broadway: By the end of Turner’s caustic and moving play, the characters have revealed that they are the same people they were as children–only worse. Yet, even as we are nearly subsumed by the self-centeredness and rapacity of the people who are supposed to love us, The Visitors offers a glimmer of hope that something sweet and sustaining can still rescue us from the brink.
Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: Yes, the premise is forced. Would Joanna really ask these semi-estranged siblings to drop everything and meet her in person instead of making separate requests over Zoom? This is a family of emotional toddlers, after all, and Joanna is not entirely exempt from that description (despite Naomi’s attempts to rein in her lover’s more outrageous, self-defeating impulses). But there’s an honesty to Turner’s characterizations in The Visitors, and a genuine humor, that justify spending time with this fractured family.
Average Rating: 77.5%
