LOWCOUNTRY Gets Low For High-Minded Social Drama — Review

Abby Rosenbrock’s Lowcountry, directed by Jo Bonney for its premiere at the Atlantic Theater, operates at an end-of-times fever pitch. Where it ends is both inevitable and yet, so alarming, that a few people at the performance I attended let out knee-jerk guffaws upon its final gesture. Whether those reactions were uncomfortable or merely unimpressed is anyone’s guess, but the play, while a bit undisciplined, has true firecracker wit.

Its first scene is a fascinating exercise in counteracting emotional information: David (Babak Tafti) comically scrambles around his shoddy studio apartment in South Carolina, trying to make it look nice for his first date while juggling a phone call of seemingly some importance. Who among us! But on the other line is Paul (Keith Kupferer), his sponsor of sorts. Oh, David mentions not being able to live near a school. And what’s this bracelet he says he’s thankful to have gotten off?

The exact details of his situation are gradually unveiled, though their broad strokes are fairly easy to grasp, but suffice it to say he’s right to be apprehensive about prospective Tinder dates looking up his name. Enter Tally (Jodi Balfour), a would-be actress briefly back home from Los Angeles to help her father move. She’s quick to glibly rail against Raytheon with headline dilettantism and has “enough self-awareness to know, at my core I’m a dithering, spiritually weak, fragile... craven-ass white woman.”

As the date progresses and Tally knowingly waves off David’s blazing red flags and clear discomfort with her sexual insistence, the playwright’s thematic intentions are revealed. This is a world of ICE raids (David, who the script mandates to be “brown” [Rosenbrock’s quotations], and was adopted from another country at an early age, is keenly aware of this) and deep mistrust in government (both the hyper-woke Tally and Paul get in digs against Bill Clinton). Fueled by true crime, self-help podcasts and the free-associative livewire disenchantment of a despairing liberal brushing up against the edges of both her guilt and empathy, Tally figures… why not this guy?

‍“We’re all things we don’t wanna be,” she rationalizes, her nebulous experiences flopping in Hollywood hovering over her every deflated move. Lowcountry is after the curdling of liberalism and conservatism into libertarian apathy. Like that real-world process, its unspooling is often sloppy, sometimes silly and always, unfortunately, dead serious.

Would these two lost souls ever really stick around each other in this way, throughout the course of one night? It’d be facile to dismiss this question, which only grows in bewilderment throughout the play’s 100 minutes, as an intended mirror of society. In terms of genre, it’s somewhere between a light thriller and a fractured comedy of manners. It’s a messy play of messy ideas, delivered bluntly, via a straightforward vehicle. It’s also, I learn from the script, the third in a trilogy which also includes the plays Wilma and The Voice of the Devil. Despite a certain lack of finesse, I’m eager to see those other two.

‍Lowcountry is in performance through July 13, 2025 at the Atlantic Theatre on West 20th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.