N/A, CUNNICULARII, & ISABEL — Review Roundup

There is no world in which N/A, the new play imagining a series of conversations between Nancy Pelosi and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, would end in a catfight, and that’s a shame. At least not in buttoned-up Lincoln Center, where this production has leased the Newhouse Theater for the summer. Its opening moments are laugh-out-loud bitchy as the women (Holland Taylor and Ana Villafañe, both stellar) size each other up, but their lacerations soon recede into niceties, and the play settles into an enjoyable, if predictable groove. Playwright Mario Correa begins the work when AOC first arrives at the House of Representatives, where the social media star is quickly dressed down by the veteran politician, and ends soon after the January 6 insurrection.

The production counts solid performances – it’s nice to see Villafañe shine in a straight play – though Diane Paulus’ direction winks at the work’s potential for “Bosom Buddies”-style nastiness by having the women pace around each other. Correa’s language is plausible and goes down smoothly, and somewhat surprisingly is not just a storm of the centrist Pelosi putting the idealistic AOC “in her place,” but once it becomes clear there won’t be much sociopolitical insight, you start wishing it’d opt for some more venomous fun. 

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Sophie McIntosh’s macbitches two years ago was a hilarious romp – a coterie of undergrads undone by a freshman’s casting as Lady Macbeth – undergirded by a poignant understanding of the impossible situations in which women must exist. McIntosh’s latest, cunnicularii, ditches the jokes (though it is oftentimes absurdist), diving deeper into femininity through a surreal tale of motherhood. This one just closed a short run at the tiny, all-white Alchemical Studios in Chelsea, from which set designer Evan Johnson and lighting designer Paige Seber created a swiftly cinematic marvel under Nina Goodheart’s impressively balletic direction.

Camille Umoff (great, with expressive eyes) played a young mother-to-be, living with her doting husband (Juan Arturo), who somehow births a rabbit. Things largely move forward as normal and, rid of its few direct references to the bunny in question, the text could read like a transcript of any average early parenthood. But the play is powered and made tense by our knowledge of the situation’s extreme abnormality, revealing McIntosh’s sharp intuition and concern for women’s place in the world. As dad talks grills and lawnmowers with the neighbor (Benjamin Milliken, also playing a condescending gynecologist), life moves past a young mother who feels alone and concerned for the reality of child-rearing in a world not built for her.

There’s a dreaminess to the production, which Goodheart directs with a fantastic sense of stagecraft, featuring fluid transitions and reveals that move the plot forward, and the play towards its intended daze. Hubby’s mother (Jen Anaya) is dressed in a beehive and ‘50s garb (costumes by Saawan Tiwari), and the young mom is often seen in Salem-like gowns, creating an impressionistic portrait of women’s dystopias amid men’s picket fence paradises.

In its dreaminess and avoidance of thudding meaning, cunnicularii can feel slight, but demonstrates McIntosh’s immense skill at exploring womanhood across a range of genres, modes, and tones.

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As the scenic design collective dots continues its reign over New York theatre, attention must be paid to its less-obvious work, like the magic they constructed for Isabel, a NAATCO production which played the Abrons Art Center earlier this month. reid tang’s atmospheric work is a trans allegory that builds from a somewhat tediously obtuse mystery into a touching meditation on found family and chosen pronouns.

Now that it has closed, I can share the exact details of the breathtaking coup de théâtre which dots pulled off. To enter the production, one had to walk down a long passageway before finding risers on which to sit, placed longways facing the action and in front of seemingly immovable curtains. Directly ahead of the risers were a shoeshine box, a double bed, and a single, haunting flower, as well as a cavernous hole carved into the middle of the graffitied upstage wall, out of which a stairwell emerged from a short curtain.

Barbara Samuels’ lighting and Tei Blow’s sound design, under Kedian Keohan’s direction, spends the play successfully building spookiness as the play’s young characters wander through a forest and what seemed to be a post-apocalyptic industrial zone. Suddenly, as they probe the space with flashlights and begin to explore the sides of the risers, they move beyond the curtains revealing an ample auditorium behind the audience – who had been onstage the whole time.

With that move, dots exploded the play by enveloping its audience in a terrifying state of nothingness, forced to reconsider its relationship to identity and reality in a way that both matched and far surpassed tang’s (promising) ability. Could a scenic design collective elicit groupie fervor, beckoning fans to follow wherever they go? Isabel suggests: yes. 

N/A is in performance through September 1, 2024 at Lincoln Center’s Newhouse Theatre on West 65th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

cunnicularii closed on July 13, 2024 at Alchemical Studios on West 17th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

Isabel closed on July 6 at the Abrons Art Center on Grand Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.