Review Roundup: WELL, I’LL LET YOU GO Returns At Studio Seaview

WELL, I’LL LET YOU GO returns to New York City this spring at Studio Seaview, following its sold-out original run. Check out what the critics are saying in our review roundup!

Written by Bubba Weiler and directed by Jack Serio, the production explores grief, memory, and resilience in a small Midwestern town. 

The play follows a woman sorting through the fragments of her life while navigating grief and personal loss. The production combines humor and emotional reflection while examining questions of memory, mourning, and recovery.

The cast of WELL, I’LL LET YOU GO includes Quincy Tyler Bernstine, Cricket Brown, Will Dagger, Emily Davis, Matthew Maher, Danny McCarthy, Constance Shulman, and Amelia Workman. Additional company members include Gabriel Marin, Jennifer Blood, and Nina Ross.

The creative team includes writer Bubba Weiler, director Jack Serio, scenic designer Frank J. Oliva, costume designer Avery Reed, lighting designer Stacey DeRosier, sound designer Brandon Bulls, original music by Avi Amon, casting by Taylor Williams, CSA, associate director Jackson Paul Walker, and production stage manager Zach Brecheen.

Emily Chackerian, 1 Minute Critic: Now playing Off-Broadway at Studio Seaview, Bubba Weiler’s Well, I’ll Let You Go is a poignant play about loss, cloaked in mystery and structured like a detective procedural: A guest stops by Maggie’s house; she makes them coffee as they offer condolences and reveal new information about Marv, then leave. A narrator (Matthew Maher) interrupts the repetition to offer further backstory, creating a slow drip that stays one step ahead of the audience.

Steven Suskin, New York Stage Review: Unspeakable tragedy—of a sort unimaginable only a few years ago, but now almost predictably commonplace—is at the center of Well, I’ll Let You Go. Playwright Bubba Weiler concentrates not on the horror of the event, but on the struggle to piece together the how and the why. Combine a keenly wrought puzzle of a play, masterfully understated direction by Jack Serio, and an astonishing performance by Quincy Tyler Bernstine, and you have a remarkable evening at Studio Seaview.

Robert Hofler, The Wrap: When a playwright tells a truly great story, it’s often difficult to review what’s happening on stage. The pleasure comes from watching that story unfold in the theater, not reading about it in a review. That proverbial onion needs to be unpeeled layer by layer in front of a rapt audience that will be both shocked and moved to tears by what’s unexpectedly discovered at the play’s core.

Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: Bubba Weiler’s transcendent one-act drama Well, I’ll Let You Go, which debuted last summer at Brooklyn’s The Space at Irondale, was my pick as the best New York theater production of last year. The show now makes a triumphant reappearance at Manhattan’s Studio Seaview with all but one of its pitch-perfect original cast members reprising their roles. Anyone who cares about theater, or deeply human storytelling, should run to see this show — which is boosted by a riveting performance by Quincy Tyler Bernstine as a new widow whose fundamental kindness forces her to manage other people’s reaction to her grief as well as her own feelings of loss and confusion. That, and the lingering suspicion that her late husband may have been harboring a dark secret.

Average Rating: 92.5%