With a title like that, Sarah Mantell’s play In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot instantly clears an impressive level of thematic interest and contemporary resonance. Receiving an attractive world premiere at Playwrights Horizons, having already won last year’s Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, it presents a fascinating (though morbid) view of the near-future, though one which could use a bit more drama. The one-acter envisions a world where the big-box corporations have won: they’re the country’s only employers, able to shift schedules as easily as they can uproot you to the next warehouse, and those are already decreasing, given that climate change has eroded coastlines to the point where only the Midwest remains. The seven workers we meet – all queer women, nonbinary, or trans, and mostly of a certain age – read aloud the addresses on outgoing boxes as the only way to keep up with the outside world. Work wholly consumes them, and they spend their time off pooling together tubs of peanut butter and fifths of whiskey to pass the time.
Hope springs for Jen (Donnetta Lavinia Grays) with the arrival of Ani (Deirdre Lovejoy), who renews their devotion to finding a lost lover who might still be out there. The others workers (played by Barsha, Sandra Caldwell, Tulis McCall, Pooya Mohseni, and Ianne Fields Stewart) all step forward to break the fourth wall and describe how they adjusted to this new way of life, providing well-rounded glimpses of what a slide into a nationwide disaster might look like for everyone. Mantell notes in their author note that a play is as much a “hiring document” as a work of art, and it is moving to see this ensemble of often undervalued actors take centerstage. But the slightness and slowness of the narrative begins to get sleepy, though the production’s tender core never collapses. And some of the dystopian elements (talk of guards seizing property; a metered doling out of information as to how the future will work) struck a particular YA chord that has always induced an eye-roll.
Sivan Battat’s staging shifts cinematically between the sterile factory floor, above which scenic designer Emmie Finckel has placed two conveyor belts of constantly moving boxes (ingeniously and sadistically evoking children’s locomotives), and an expansive mountain range upstage. It’s a well-designed production, but I wonder if the requisite smallness of the work – it demands to be populated by people whose inner light has been all but dimmed, which this cast beautifully delivers – would benefit from the intimacy of a close-up, rather than the proscenium. Still, that gorgeous backdrop represents the wide-open escape Mantell dares to dream, even as the situation they create becomes increasingly bleak. This world is devised with an unsparing and clear-eyed vision that is startling in its perceptiveness, disheartening in its accuracy and, against all odds, rousingly optimistic in its final moments.
In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot is in performance at Playwrights Horizons on West 42nd St in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.
Early into the director Sam Gold’s winning revival of Romeo + Juliet, a Montague and a Capulet interrupt their fight to share a brief makeout, smile conspiratorially at each other, then resume brawling. No, they’re not the titular star-crossed lovers, but rather two of their feuding comrades, Abraham (Daniel Bravo Hernández) and Gregory (Jasai Chase-Owens). It’s a bold, succinct announcement of what this staging of Shakespeare’s 16th-century work will be: queer, modern and, yes, bratty.
It’s smart to have this cheeky moment occur so quickly, both in how soon it occurs and how rapidly it’s moved past: there’s a slight cringe factor at the intervention (“Oh, this is edgy Shakespeare”) but, also, a truth (aren’t most men so bent on engaging in physical confrontation ultimately a little, well, bent?).
The same can be said for the aggressive promotional push the production – which features teen heartthrobs Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler – began in the months preceding its opening. For those not squarely in the 25-and-under thrall to those two, its strategy could come off as repellent; overloaded with try-hard slogans like “THE YOUTH IS F*CKED,” a seeming overreliance on Bushwick aesthetics, and a dubious “music by Jack Antonoff” credit that had so far only produced a Bleachers-scored teaser that looked like a defanged Euphoria. Can we not have a nice, simple Shakespeare without resulting to such culture vulturing?
It turns out that, aside from some harmless frippery on the edges of the production, this is a remarkably strong Romeo + Juliet, performed in the round at Circle in the Square. Once the cast is done performing capital-C-coolness, as they do in the mosh pit-like rave scene that opens the show, they launch into an appealingly well-acted, sleek adaptation of the well-known tale. Working with the dramaturgs Michael Sexton and Ayanna Thompson, and whittling it into a potent two-hours-ten plus intermission, Gold has focused the play’s energy onto its social dynamics.
The first act, especially, places an attractive premium on the party at which the lovers will meet, portraying the two clans (they’re less obviously families than groups here) as teens antsy to just hang out and get into trouble. A nice bit comes when a cast member hands out party flyers to audience members in the front row. Antonoff’s thumping techno score keeps a lively pace, as do Sonya Tayeh’s pulsating movement direction and choreography, and Isabella Byrd’s fun bisexual lighting.
The stylization reaches its peak in a truly transfixing balcony scene, with the brawny Connor standing on a bed of multicolor roses and Zegler on a small cot suspended from the ceiling. (dots arranged the scenic design.) Connor is a leading-man revelation, flexing an iron grasp on the material (and on Juliet’s bed, when he hoists himself up there; cue adoring swoons from the audience) and ability to make it fresh and romantic. Zegler, though with fewer scenes to prove her acting chops, is clearly a star, and shines in a soulful new ballad by Antonoff.
(The flashiness reaches rock bottom in a modification of an often-cut scene where a character attempts to lighten the mood through music. Here, it’s by leading an audience singalong of “We Are Young.” As with the production’s few other distractions, it thankfully goes as quickly as it comes.)
The less dolled-up scenes drag slightly. Too much heavy lifting is dumped onto Gabby Beans’ shoulders in her dual narrator role as Mercutio and the friar. The day Beans gives a bad performance has yet to come (and never will), but even her endless charisma can’t match the rest of the production’s freneticism whenever the music stops and the house lights go up. (She does, however, light up the otherwise silly rave scenes with the full-tilt energy of someone who has actually been to a few of these.)
Beans and the rest of the young cast are in top form, even if Tommy Dorfman draws a bit too much attention to herself as Juliet’s nurse, and later Tybalt. Rounding out the rest of the Motomami Montagues (Enver Chakartash has decked out Romeo’s tribe in masculine BMX gear, with more femme looks for the Capulets) are Taheen Modak and Nihar Duvvuri as Benvolio and Balthazar. On the opposite side of the divide are Sola Fadiran, very funny as both Capulet parents, and Gían Perez as Samson, Peter, and an R&B-crooning Paris. All look appropriately plucked right out of the Morgan Ave L-train stop, in keeping with the production’s aesthetic.
None of them are ever offstage for too long, and Gold’s emphasis on social circles supports the play’s intended tragedy of two sacrificial lambs caught in a larger web. Despite the star power of its leads, the staging holds firm in its strong thematic core. It’s all a very pleasant surprise that this Romeo + Juliet is more akin to Skins – the British series whose impact we must not let be forgotten – than expected: wildly enjoyable, acutely contemporary, potently acted, and often surprisingly revealing.
Romeo + Juliet is in performance at the Circle in the Square Theatre on West 50th St in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.
The Broadway premiere of Back To The Future is closing up shop. The show will play its final performance at the Winter Garden Theatre on Sunday, January 5, 2025. At the time of closing, Back To The Future will have played 35 previews and 597 performances over its 18 month run.
Still running in London, the musical will soon open in Germany and Japan, plus an 8-year deal with Royal Caribbean to play the musical in its full physical form on Star of the Seas, the largest cruise ship in the world.
“With nearly 40 percent of our audience never having seen a production on Broadway before, I’m proud that at a time when theatre is viewed by so many as being inaccessible that this show was able to bring in a new audience and it is my hope that this legacy endures and these people return to see another Broadway show in the future. We are having the same success across the North American Tour where the show has already been seen by half a million people - many also new to the theatre. We look forward to welcoming fans to the theatre with four new productions opening next year including Japan and Germany as they join our two existing productions in London’s West End (now in its 4th year) and the North American Tour,” said Lead Producer Colin Ingram.
The company currently stars Tony Nominee Roger Bart (Doc Brown), Casey Likes (Marty McFly), Evan Alexander Smith (George McFly), Liana Hunt (Lorraine Baines), Jelani Remy (Goldie Wilson/Marvin Berry), and Nathaniel Hackmann (Biff Tannen). The ensemble includes David Josefsberg (Strickland), Mikaela Secada (Jennifer Parker), Aaron Alcaraz, Gregory Carl Banks Jr., Susie Carroll, Brendan Chan, Kevin Curtis, Samuel Gerber, Marc Heitzman, Kimberly Immanuel, Joshua Kenneth Allen Johnson, Jamary Kendricks, Katie LaDuca, Lizzy Marie Legregin, JJ Niemann, Jessie Peltier, Becca Petersen, Jonalyn Saxer, Blakely Slaybaugh, Gabi Stapula and Davis Wayne.
For tickets and more information, visit here.