Review Roundup: GRAND CONCOURSE Opens Off-Broadway

Playwrights Horizons' world premiere production of GRAND CONCOURSE, a new play by playwright and two-time Obie Award-winning actress Heidi Schreck (author of There Are No More Big Secrets, Creature, Showtime's "Nurse Jackie"), opens tonight, November 12, 2014.

Directed by Kip Fagan (The Revisionist, Asuncion), the cast of GRAND CONCOURSE features Obie Award winner Quincy Tyler Bernstine (Mr. Burns and Far From Heaven at PH; In the Next Room...; Ruined), Ismenia Mendes (Your Mother's Copy of the Kama Sutra at PH; The Wayside Motor Inn), Bobby Moreno (Drama Desk nomination for Year of the Rooster) and Tony Award nominee and Obie Award winner Lee Wilkof (Assassins and Glance of a Landscape at PH; Breakfast at Tiffany's and Kiss Me, Kate on Broadway; the original Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors).

Called to a life of religious service, Shelley (Ms. Bernstine) is the devoted manager of a Bronx soup kitchen, but lately her heart's not quite in it. Enter Emma (Ms. Mendes): an idealistic but confused young volunteer with mixed intentions, whose recklessness pushes Shelley to the breaking point.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Charles Isherwood, The New York Times: Matters of faith and friendship, and secrets and lies, are blended into the stew in "Grand Concourse," a modest but likable new play...Ms. Schreck's drama...unfolds mostly during the busy work days in the kitchen, where piles of chopped vegetables are poured into big vats under the brisk supervision of a nun named Shelley, played by the ever-excellent Quincy Tyler Bernstine...Ms. Schreck...writes fluid, natural dialogue and creates detailed characters that offer generous opportunities for actors. The director, Kip Fagan, draws lively, layered performances from the small cast...Ms. Bernstine's fine-grained performance steadily strips away the tough top layers to reveal the depth of Shelley's doubts about her calling, and her life.

Linda Winer, Newsday: There is such interesting goodness in the denizens of "Grand Concourse," Heidi Schreck's engrossing exploration of the limitations of forgiveness in a soup kitchen in the Bronx...Quincy Tyler Bernstine has a sharp, deadpan intelligence as Shelley, the modern-dress nun who runs the spotless kitchen...Bobby Moreno is lovely as Oscar, the handyman, a gangly sweetheart from the Dominican Republic, now a City University student whose capacity for love is matched by his offbeat locutions and perspective. Veteran character actor Lee Wilkof brings shrewd originality to the potential stereotype of the wise old homeless Jew. And Ismenia Mendes, in the trickiest role of the newcomer, changes the young woman's contradictory masks with scary conviction. In just 100 minutes, Schreck develops these multilayered characters while touching crises of faith and fidelity, the food chain and a vision based on gentleness. To her credit, little is solved.

Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Daily News: This worthwhile, albeit not completely convincing, drama about the limits of faith, connections and compassion unfolds in a Bronx church soup kitchen...The slicing and dicing is always realistic, but the script by author and actress Heidi Schreck doesn't always land with the same sharped-edged authenticity. Sure, the four characters are colorful and quirky -- and brought to life vividly in director Kip Fagan's staging. Still, some of the actions, plot twists and dialogue stretch credulity...While most stories about nuns can't resist being feel-good and sincere, the best thing about Schreck's story is its dry-eyed lack of sweetness and sentiment. Amen to that.

Elisabeth Vincentelli, New York Post: Set in a Bronx soup kitchen, "Grand Concourse" is something of a morality tale. But while Heidi Schreck's new play is about big issues like faith and forgiveness, it has such a light, empathetic touch that it never feels like a lecture. You may need tissues by the end, though. This Playwrights Horizons production benefits greatly from having Quincy Tyler Bernstine ("Mr. Burns," "Far From Heaven") in the key role of Shelley, the nun in civilian clothing who runs the soup kitchen. Few actors can pull off non-tear-jerking pathos like Bernstine, with her downturned mouth and idiosyncratic line readings. She's especially wonderful here as the pragmatic Shelley...

Jason Clark, Entertainment Weekly: ...despite all the food passing before your eyes, you may feel a little undernourished by play's end. Heidi Schreck's new play, set in the Bronx in a soup kitchen run by dress-down nun Shelley (Quincy Tyler Bernstine), certainly does not lack for empathy, using Rachel Hauck's ultra-realistic kitchen backdrop as a kind of confessional for its disparate characters...Schreck and her trusting director Kip Fagan clearly love actors, and the play is at its best when it takes a slice-of-life (or is it slice-of-vegetable?) approach. But once the play starts to unpack the tortured natures of its eccentrics, it begins to feel a bit overwrought -- substituting loud for purposeful -- when a muted, more unsettling approach seems more in tune with the people you're watching.

Matthew Murray, Talkin' Broadway: Forgiveness, [Schreck] posits, is a quality that has to be earned, developed, and respected. It's not automatic, and those who treat it that way or take it for granted are those probably least likely to receive it when they need it most. As long as Schreck focuses on this, she has no trouble keeping her play, which has been given a rock-solid, unsentimental production by Kip Fagan, engaging and relevant...The most remarkable creation on view here is Shelley, a compelling blend of classical ideals and modern acceptance, a nun who's a part of the real world of today, but one who's struggling to view it through the Catholic lens that's always before her...There's plenty of brittleness, but also love for the demanding path she's chosen, and Bernstine has no trouble making Shelley warm, recognizable, and relatable. Her portrayal beautifully sets the stage for the towering, if not outright catastrophic, collapse it's clear will eventually come.

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Photo Credit: Joan Marcus