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Reviews are in for The Saviors, the world premiere play by Bubba Weiler, now playing at Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater.
Directed by Jack Serio, The Saviors centers on two altar boys whose bond is tested when a troubled young man seeks refuge in their church, setting off a crisis of faith, identity, and connection.
The production stars Crystal Finn, Ivan Howe, Julius Rinzel, and Stanley Simons. The Saviors marks the latest collaboration between Weiler and Serio, who previously worked together on Well, I’ll Let You Go.
Part of Atlantic Theater Company’s 2025–2026 40th Anniversary Season, the production began performances on July 8, officially opened on July 27, and continues through August 15 at the Linda Gross Theater.
BroadwayWorld previously published a first look at production photos from the world premiere, featuring the full cast in scenes from the Linda Gross Theater staging.
Read what the critics are saying below.
Helen Shaw, The New York Times: I was occasionally impatient with the production, but that feeling has dissolved as time has gone by. The more I realized that Serio and Weiler had diverted me with teenage drama from an adult horror beneath, the more I admired the 90 minutes I spent at the Atlantic. This may be a play that needs to be considered twice. And, anyway, that’s what a certain savior would say, right? It is better to live through some sorrows a second time, knowing what’s to come.
Lane Williamson, ExeuntNYC: I ended my review of Serio’s definitive Uncle Vanya talking about his attention to prop details and his economy of stuff onstage. Here, I had the same connection to the purse that Finn carries. It contains something life-altering and, in a very heightened conflict, becomes the focal point, dead center on the stage. How Serio so subtly imbues this inanimate object with such weight is just one example of his talent. There are many others in The Saviors, and of Weiler’s, too. Let’s cross our fingers that they continue making plays together.
Robert Hofler, The Wrap: Today’s playwrights, unfortunately, have to write with the current state of theater economics in mind. But a play like “The Saviors” needs a few more townspeople, not to mention a working priest, to help us visualize that oft-mentioned community. It’s what we get in great community dramas like Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” and Arthur Miller’s “A View From the Bridge.”
Kyle Turner, New York Theatre Guide: There’s a strange neatness that arises from the characters, a clear mathematical equation as to who’s saving whom: Michael wants to save Paul, who wants to save Julian, who wants to be saved by Judy, who is tasked with saving Michael. The Saviors could use a little more complexity, a bit more texture to make its world as real as the two young boys who inhabit it.
Michael Sommers, New York Stage Review: The emotional and sexual confusion of early adolescence partly forms the story of The Saviors, but Bubba Weiler’s tender new drama rises beyond mere teen angst to develop a higher theme about compassion. Premiering on Monday, Atlantic Theater Company’s production is gracefully staged by Jack Serio at the Linda Gross Theater, which was built as a church and now neatly accommodates a contemporary American play set mostly around the sanctuary of a modest Roman Catholic church.
Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: Weiler has emerged as one of the most precociously promising playwrights of the American theater. There’s a deep humanism that courses through his work that makes his characters compelling to watch even as they stumble about in the darkness of their lives, trying to do good as best they can. “Now I don’t know what to do because. Like I keep thinking okay, what would Jesus do, but it never says,” Michael says toward the end of the play. “He’s a kid and then all of the sudden he’s thirty So now I don’t know what to do.” Even in their confusion, though, Michael and the other characters in The Saviors have one constant despite their different relationships to their faith over time. Like habitual theater-goers seeking stories that will explain the world to them, they keep returning to a stained-glass sanctuary that they hope will illuminate their path forward.
Howard Miller, Talkin’ Broadway: This certainly has been a banner year for playwright Bubba Weiler, whose Well, I’ll Let You Go received five Drama Desk nominations and two Outer Critics Circle awards just a couple of months back. This increasingly spotlighted writer is only in his early 30s himself, which is a couple of years older than Jack Serio, the director of both this play and Well, I’ll Let You Go. I look forward to seeing more from the two of them in the near future, as well as from the teenage stars who are doing a top-notch job delivering the goods in The Saviors.
Average Rating: 87.1%
