Review: PLANO BY WILL ARBERY at Third Space Theatre

Third Space Theater’s production of Will Arbery’s Plano, running now through January 18, 2026 at the Alan Page Auditorium at Mixed Blood Theatre, is fast, strange, and often deliberately disorienting. Directed by Alex Church and Em Adam Rosenberg, the show moves like a thought you can’t quite finish—one moment funny, the next unsettling, and frequently both at the same time.

Plano centers on three sisters whose lives begin to fracture as time, memory, and identity stop following any recognizable rules. Days collapse into seconds. Men split into multiple versions of themselves. The past doesn’t stay in the past. Arbery’s script leans hard into absurdity, but the emotional stakes underneath are painfully real. This is a play about how families carry damage forward, often without noticing, and about how women are shaped—sometimes warped—by the emotional weight of men in their lives.

Stephanie Kahle, Hannah Leatherbarrow, and Mariabella Sorini form the core of the production as Anne, Genevieve, and Isabel. Their performances feel grounded even as the world of the play slides out from under them. Kahle’s Anne clings to control with a tension that never fully relaxes. Leatherbarrow gives Genevieve a restless intensity, sharp-edged and unpredictable. Sorini’s Isabel is quieter, but her stillness draws focus, often serving as the emotional undercurrent of a scene. Together, they capture the rhythms of sisterhood—the interruptions, the old resentments, the moments of unexpected care.

Jennifer D’Lynn’s Mary is particularly striking. Her performance suggests how harm can be passed down not through overt cruelty, but through casual dismissal and normalized behavior. Ben Qualley’s Steve and Samuel Osborne-Huerta’s John/Juan embody different expressions of masculinity that feel uncomfortably familiar—by turns ridiculous, charming, and threatening. Osborne-Huerta’s doubled role is especially effective, reinforcing the idea that these men are less individuals than recurring patterns.

Michael Hundevad’s Faceless Ghost weaves through the production as a physical reminder of what the family refuses to confront. Rosenberg’s choreography keeps the cast in motion, giving the sense that the characters are constantly being pulled by forces just outside their control.

The design work supports the play’s speed and instability. Olivia von Edeskuty’s set allows scenes to shift quickly without drawing attention to itself. Jackson Funke’s lighting and Sam Faye King’s sound design do much of the emotional heavy lifting, marking transitions in time and tone with precision rather than spectacle.

Plano is often very funny, but it never settles into comfort. The humor is sharp and sometimes cruel, and the laughs frequently land a beat before the discomfort sets in. The content warnings—strong language, violence, racism, and references to domestic and sexual assault—are important, but the production handles these themes with intention rather than sensationalism.

Third Space Theater’s partnership with Tubman, donating 10% of ticket sales to an organization supporting survivors of violence and trauma, feels aligned with the material rather than tacked on. Plano is less about depicting harm than about showing how it lingers, mutates, and resurfaces over time.

At just 85 minutes with no intermission, the show moves quickly, but it leaves a long afterimage. This is not an easy play, and it doesn’t try to be. Third Space Theater has leaned into its strangeness, trusting the audience to follow—even when the path forward feels intentionally unclear.

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