Review Roundup: COLD WAR CHOIR PRACTICE at MCC Theater

Cold War Choir Practice, a play with music by Ro Reddick and directed by Tony Award nominee Knud Adams, officially opened on Tuesday, March 10 and a limited run through Sunday, March 29, 2026 at MCC Theater’s Newman Mills Theater.  Read the reviews below!

The cast includes Alana Raquel Bowers as Meek, Will Cobbs as Smooch, Crystal Finn as Virgie, Andy Lucien as Clay, Lizan Mitchell as Puddin, with Grace McLean, Suzzy Roche, and Nina Ross as members of the Choir, and Ellen Winter as the Choir Leader.

In Cold War Choir Practice, a young girl is embroiled in intrigue when her estranged uncle, a prominent Black conservative, brings his mysteriously ill wife home for the holidays. Cold War Choir Practice is an explosion of roller disco, Reaganomics, espionage, and cults, underscored by the cryptic Syracuse, NY, chapter of the Seedlings of Peace Children’s Chorus.

Loren Noveck, Exeunt: The play Reddick has built on the foundation of that experience, Cold War Choir Practice, is a coming-of-age fantasia that embraces a wild array of genres and styles, leading us down a path filled with farce, music, and suspense to some stark truths that ring as true now as they did in the play’s 1987 setting: Institutional power can steamroller over individual choices, every time.

Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: Director Knud Adams does an admirable job trying to calibrate between the wild swings in tone and seriousness, leaning on the choir to smooth some of the more rugged transitions. They consistently draw our attention away from the absurdities of the plot and the hurried attempts to ground the characters in a kind of reality. Plus, their red-hued outfits (designed by Brenda Abbandandolo) simultaneously call to mind the multiple threads of the story. They read as church choir, red communist comrades, or Christmas carolers, depending on the moment.

Amelia Merrill, New York Theatre Guide: Cold War Choir Practice often forays into song, with music and lyrics by Reddick. The children’s choir rehearses for their holiday show, but it also serves as a Greek chorus, narrating both action and internal thought. Grace McLean is a particular standout, alternating pop star bravado and melodrama. Music director Ellen Winter, who also serves as the onstage Choir Leader, should be commended as much as director Knud Adams for balancing the show's tone.

Robert Hofler, The Wrap: Reddick’s story delivers so much dizzying suspense (after you’ve figured out what’s going on) that even a huge bomb explosion – Masha Tsimring’s lighting and Kathy Ruvuna’s sound effects make you jump — is something of a letdown.

Sara Holdren, Vulture: Even as individual moments of Cold War Choir Practice continued to charm me, I kept wondering what exactly was preventing me from getting swept up all the way. Part of my stuckness, I think, sprung from Afsoon Pajoufar’s set, which situates the whole play inside the architecture of the roller rink.

Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater: Luckily, Reddick, director Knud Adams and the rest of the creative team stick to history in some small but satisfying ways – the way the ensemble skates on the roller rink (guided by Baye and Asa’s movement direction), albeit without skates; that Speak & Spell (an actual handheld electronic educational toy introduced by Texas Instruments in 1978), and, above all, the cinnamon-flavored jawbreakers invented in 1954 that Meek gobbles up from the neighborhood candy shop – the Atomic Fireballs.

Frank Scheck, New York Stage Review: It’s all a bit much, honestly, with the playwright not fully successful in getting all of her fantastical, Boris & Natasha-style plot elements across. But thanks in large part to the inventive direction by Knud Adams (English), the witty, farcical play proves consistently amusing even while making serious points about such things as 80’s-era Cold War politics and divisions within the Black community.

David Finkle, New York Stage Review: Through it all the agreeable cast members do whatever they can with the material—choir members McLean, Roche, Ross repeatedly lurking and larking—but it may be director Knud Adams (with the property since its Clubbed Thumb and Page 73 development) is too committed to the overplaying that the outcome is so tiring.

Adam Feldman, Time Out: The story’s timeline is not always intelligible—or, for that matter, possible—and Afsoon Pajoufar’s attractively curved Roll-a-Rama set, which employs mirrors very cleverly at one exit, doesn’t do much to define the play’s various physical spaces. But clarity is not exactly the goal. Reddick is not aiming for realism; a bomb in the climatic sequence is just bundled red sticks of dynamite, Looney Tunes style.

Matthew Wexler, 1 Minute Critic: For anyone who had to read Alas, Babylon in school or sit through ABC’s The Day After—both nightmare-inducing post-apocalyptic narratives—Cold War Choir Practice will strike a nerve. But it’s hardly a museum piece. As the U.S. throws itself into another nuclear tantrum under the guise of self-preservation, Meek’s obsession with building a fallout shelter is all too real.

Average Rating: 69.0%