Review Roundup: NEW BORN, Starring Hugh Jackman, Sepideh Moafi & Marianna Gailus

Up next at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre is New Born, performed by Marianna Gailus, Tony Award winner Hugh Jackman, and Sepideh Moafi. The show features three monologues by award-winning British playwright Ella Hickson that originated from a joint commission by Sonia Friedman Productions and Audible Theater.

Directed by Ian Rickson, New Born plays 27 performances only through Monday, June 8. Driven by a shared commitment to accessibility, 25% of the house for every performance will have $35 tickets, available only on the day of show through TodayTix (lottery opens at 5pm before each performance day) or in person at the Minetta Lane Theatre (box office opens at 12pm on performance days).

A tree surgeon falls in love. A young woman searches for her lost friend on the prairie. A new mother is consumed by an unlikely celebrity friendship. In three monologues, unrelated individuals find their smallest choices ripple into seismic changes that connect them across centuries and continents.

Let's see what the critics have to say about the new play...

Laura Collins-Hughes, New York Times: Adroitly attuned to the audience upstairs and down, Jackman is utterly in the room with us. Charmingly relatable and lightly comical, his performance is at times emotionally naked — especially after the tree surgeon leaves Katie because his attraction to her has left him. “You can’t live the rest of your life against your body, against your nature,” he tells us. “I didn’t stop loving her, incidentally, ever.” Tears fall helplessly from the tree surgeon’s eyes. The sight of it stabs at our hearts. And Jackman, in his element, has us rapt.

Charles Isherwood, Wall Street Journal: With his blooming warmth and engaging rapport with the audience, Mr. Jackman is a perfect interpreter of his character. The anguish he feels, his powerlessness to control his responses, his shame and frustration—at Katie and himself—are expressed with such raw feeling that the performance can be hard to watch. These secret sorrows bring us into an uncomfortable intimacy with the narrator. Eventually the story takes a dark turn that pushes a little hard into irony—or unfortunate coincidence—but Mr. Jackman’s boundlessly truthful portrayal never falters in its quiet intensity.

David Gordon, Theatremania: That Rickson’s staging comes together in Weideman’s lighting is not surprising, but it is slightly head-scratching that a production ultimately designed to be heard lands best in purely visual terms. New Born might not be the most compelling listen, but it’s a beautiful watch.

Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: Like the trees whose dead wood Jackman’s character diligently chainsaws, Hickson’s script could also use some pruning. She’s not averse to a narrative twist, but she never seems to want to linger for very long on what it might portend. That’s a shame, because at its best New Born captures familiar dynamics of human relationships — our addiction to scrolling on our phones, our willingness to turn a blind eye to the obvious in the name of self-preservation, our ability to allow Hugh Jackman’s charisma to distract us from his character’s shortcomings.

Frank Scheck, New York Stage Review: Rickson’s staging for the three portions is once again simple but effective, featuring few embellishments, scenic or otherwise, other than the tall ladder that Jackman climbs to suggest his character at work on a tree. Running 110 minutes without an intermission, the evening adds up to less than the sum of its parts. But as a showcase for its trio of talented actors, it works beautifully.

Average Rating: 74.0%