Critic’s Notebook: INDIAN PRINCESSES + GIRL, INTERRUPTED

Senior Critic Joey Sims has been busy around town catching the latest of what Off-Broadway has to offer. His thoughts below:

INDIAN PRINCESSES

In a forthright letter slipped inside the playbill for Indian Princesses, playwright Eliana Theologides Rodriguez acknowledges the harmful and offensive origins of her new play’s title—while also contextualizing that title within her own history with the unfortunate YMCA program. 

“Though the mission of the program is wholesome––helping fathers and children bond through earthy adventures and community-building––its reality is a complete bastardization of Native American culture,” Rodriguez writes. While she does not identify as Native, Rodriguez notes that her own tribal heritage was lost in past generations due to forced assimilation. 

“I do not know a word of my ancestors’ languages,” the playwright adds. “But I remember every word of our 2008 [camp] tribal chant.” 

Rodriguez’s thorny choice of setting—one that raises questions around identity, colonialism and inherited trauma—offers more than enough material for one play. But in this messy and overstuffed new work, now at Atlantic Theater Company through June 7, the legacy of that now-renamed program is just one of many overlapping concerns. 

This ambitious work follows five girls of color taking the “Indian Princesses” program with their hapless white fathers, all of whom struggle to communicate around race with their daughters. Some supernatural themes slip in along the way, along with thoughtful reflections on grief, toxic masculinity and the messy bonds formed between young girls. 

Juggling an array of locations and thematic concerns, director Miranda Cornell can’t find a center. Honoring each girl’s distinct questions around race and inherited culture makes for an ungainly if occasionally moving work. Native culture is ultimately an afterthought, which leaves the play’s premise feeling awkwardly opportunistic. 

But in quiet moments between fathers and daughters, Rodriguez does hit on occasional flashes of transcendence, suggesting an exciting new voice ready to tackle big ideas. 

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GIRL, INTERRUPTED

The gentleness of new musical Girl, Interrupted comes as a welcome surprise. Susanna Kaysen’s 1993 memoir, recounting her time in a psychiatric hospital, was previously spiced-up for its 1999 film adaptation with a number of dramatic embellishments. It’s a gripping film, but not the most sensitive exploration of mental health. 

For this gorgeously conceived stage adaptation scored by singer-songwriter Aimee Mann, book writer Martyna Majok has taken quite the opposite tack. Her text keeps us firmly grounded in Susanna’s perspective, as a tremendous Julianna Canfield narrates directly to the audience with a haunted detachment. In director Jo Bonney’s tender production, Susanna’s time at McLean Hospital is given a dreamlike quality, while the psychological struggles of Susanna and other girls are treated with careful nuance. 

Certainly, this approach runs a risk of sucking the emotional intensity out of the proceedings. But a soft touch is not the same as looking away. Majok’s adaptation confronts the systemic failures of the system in which these women are trapped with clear-eyed forthrightness, while Bonney ensures their depths of despair are always simmering under the surface—and, very occasionally, boil up without warning. But overall, this creative team is extending a moving sort of kindness to its audience. The pain can be understood without being inflicted again. 

Still, I did long for a bit more emotional variance in Mann’s score. The composer sticks almost entirely to her signature melancholy style, providing serene tunes with an aching soul. The music is beautiful, and blends seamlessly with Majok’s book. But in Susanna’s darkest moments, a harsher sound perhaps is called for, yet never arrives.