THE THANKSGIVING PLAY Previews

[EDSOSLO858]

Posted: 3/24/23 at 12:10am

Get the turkey ready…

Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play begins previews at the Helen Hayes Theatre tomorrow (March 25), before it officially opens on April 20. Directed by Rachel Chavkin, the show stars D’Arcy Carden, Katie Finneran, Scott Foley, and Chris Sullivan. The Thanksgiving Play’s limited run will conclude on June 4.

I’ve read this play before for a class — it’s very funny — and I look forward to hearing reports on how this is on stage.  

“When a troupe of really, really well-meaning theater artists attempt to put on a culturally sensitive Thanksgiving school pageant, things get messy. Hilarious and poignant, this delicious play skewers everything right, wrong, and woke in America.”

Who’s going?

[Candice Malkin]

Posted: 3/24/23 at 11:08am

I have tickets in 2 weeks. I was supposed to see Room and picked this when Room canceled. Hope its a good one!

[Alex M]

Posted: 3/24/23 at 7:12pm

Will be there on Thursday! Super Excited!

[TheWindAndTheRain]

Posted: 3/25/23 at 10:26pm

Just got out of the first preview (ran a tight hour and 40, as advertised). Holy Crap, was that fun!

I went in to this pretty blind and I highly recommend it. As I was leaving the theater, I overheard someone say they saw it at Playwrights and noticed quite a few changes to the script. 

I think this is the play The Minutes wanted to be and wasn’t. The satire in this was much more pointed and nuanced, which can obviously be attributed to having a Native American playwright.

The cast is uniformly excellent. Chris Sullivan is a hilariously adorable dork. D’Arcy Carden makes an incredible Broadway debut as the play’s wise fool. But Katie Finneran is the glue that holds this show together and she’s already giving a a truly brilliant performance. Scott Foley was also great, but I think that the other three will be strong contenders for the featured performance Tonys. 

I’ve never really associated Rachel Chavkin with comedy, but she’s directed the hell out of this. She creates some tableaus here that are absolutely hysterical.

I have a feeling this could be a big hit. Maybe not God of Carnage big, but it’s an uproarious comedy with four dynamite performances, so who knows?

[k-ron78]

Posted: 3/28/23 at 6:57pm

Just sitting here waiting to watch a play skewering performative wokeness while being told to wear a mask for the first time in a year:

[n2nbaby]

Posted: 3/28/23 at 7:12pm

k-ron78 said: "Just sitting here waiting to watch a play skewering performative wokeness while being told to wear a mask for the first time in a year:"

You can leave if you’d like.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 3/28/23 at 7:49pm

Found this one to be a lot of fun. If you’re a horror fan (even though the show isn’t scary in any way) you’ll get a lot of Easter eggs in it. I actually was able to ask the playwright about that and she said none of it is in the script but Chavkin  is a huge horror fan (makes me love her even more) and that’s all her. She said Chavkin’s idea was to stage the show like “The Shining” which is fascinating and I need to go back to it to see if I can pick up on any of that. 
 

And I’ll just agree that in this sea of tv/film stars it’s Finneran who owns the stage. Everyone is excellent but, as in everything she does where she can truly be hilarious, she eats it up. A definite Tony nomination, I’m sure. 

[The Distinctive Baritone]

Posted: 3/28/23 at 8:00pm

n2nbaby said: "k-ron78 said: "Just sitting here waiting to watch a play skewering performative wokeness while being told to wear a mask for the first time in a year:"

You can leave if you’d like."


If everyone in the country was vaccinated and boosted against COVID, the virus would be a non-issue. I agree that having to wear masks in certain settings three years into this pandemic is a) frustrating because most people are not up to date on their booster, and b) mostly pointless if people aren’t wearing them anywhere else.

The characters in this play are so funny because they may be exaggerated, but are actually not that far off the mark from a lot of theater people who are morally righteous but completely missing the bigger picture.

[RippedMan]

Posted: 3/28/23 at 8:06pm

Jordan Catalano said: "Found this one to be a lot of fun. If you’re a horror fan (even though the show isn’t scary in any way) you’ll get a lot of Easter eggs in it. I actually was able to ask the playwright about that and she said none of it is in the script but Chavkin is a huge horror fan (makes me love her even more) and that’s all her. She said Chavkin’s idea was to stage the show like “The Shining” which is fascinating and I need to go back to it to see if I can pick up on any of that.


And I’ll just agree that in this sea of tv/film stars it’s Finneran who owns the stage. Everyone is excellent but, as in everything she does where she can truly be hilarious, she eats it up. A definite Tony nomination, I’m sure."

Would love to know more about the horror elements? Or what do you mean exactly? Just given the premise this is not what I would expect but am super curious!

[PipingHotPiccolo]

Posted: 3/28/23 at 8:09pm

k-ron78 said: "Just sitting here waiting to watch a play skewering performative wokeness while being told to wear a mask for the first time in a year:"

I agree it seems ridiculous at this point, but thats based on MY health, and MY risk tolerance. The theater has every right to make rules you or I don't like, and the beauty of it is, you have every right to leave. Hashtag its a free country babe.

[MemorableUserName]

Posted: 3/28/23 at 8:27pm

k-ron78 said: "Just sitting here waiting to watch a play skewering performative wokeness while being told to wear a mask for the first time in a year:"

In case anyone is unaware, this is not a requirement at all performances. Second Stage has certain Mask Mandated Performances where masks are required, so that audience members who would be more comfortable in a masked audience can choose those shows. There are maybe 8 through the entire run--mostly Wednesday matinees and only two evening performances: tonight and next Tuesday. Anyone who would prefer not to wear a mask has about six dozen other performances available to them.

Complaining about wearing a mask when you specifically chose a mask mandated performance and could have chosen from numerous others is ridiculous.

Updated On: 3/28/23 at 08:27 PM

[k-ron78]

Posted: 3/28/23 at 10:19pm

MemorableUserName said: "k-ron78 said: "Just sitting here waiting to watch a play skewering performative wokeness while being told to wear a mask for the first time in a year:"

In case anyone is unaware, this is not a requirement at all performances. Second Stage has certain Mask Mandated Performances where masks are required, so that audience members who would be more comfortable in a masked audience can choose those shows. There are maybe 8 through the entire run--mostly Wednesday matinees and only two evening performances: tonight and next Tuesday. Anyone who would prefer not to wear a mask has about six dozen other performances available to them.

Complaining about wearing a mask when you specifically chose a mask mandated performance and could have chosen from numerous others is ridiculous."

1) I didn’t.

2) If my joke gets your dander up, this probably isn’t the play for you.

 

[tinmanic]

Posted: 3/29/23 at 11:20am

I saw this on Sunday knowing very little about the show beyond the premise, and... I thought it was fine? The performances were very funny, although I thought Katie Finneran was a bit too monotonously high-strung and one-note - and I usually love her onstage.

I'm not sure who the play is for, though. It basically makes fun of political correctness - but hasn't that concept been done to death? Is there anyone who's really as extremely politically correct in real life as the two leads onstage are? The idea was funny at first, but at a certain point I felt like, "OK, I get it." It just didn't seem realistic.

Yes, I understand that it's supposed to be satire. But satire should teach you something and I don't feel like I learned anything insightful from these extreme caricatures.

Fortunately the play is funny, so it has that going for it.

 

Updated On: 3/29/23 at 11:20 AM

[The Distinctive Baritone]

Posted: 3/29/23 at 11:30am

Yeah, it is kind of a one-joke play, but it's only like 80 minutes long so it works I think. I no longer live in NY so I can't see it, but I saw a semi-professional regional production about a year ago and I thought it was pretty funny. And although the characters are exaggerations, I think Logan and Caden especially are not that far off from certain theatre types. 

[tinmanic]

Posted: 3/29/23 at 11:43am

The Distinctive Baritone said: "Yeah, it is kind of a one-joke play, but it's only like 80 minutes long

Just BTW this production is about 95 minutes.

 

[ggersten]

Posted: 3/29/23 at 2:44pm

We saw a production at Curious Theatre in Denver (pre-COVID) and thoroughly enjoyed it.  To me, it is less about "political correctness" - but more so, it is a send up of people who identify as "allies" and the extremes they could go to.  

There also are a fair amount of historical corrections in the text. 

[Sutton Ross]

Posted: 3/29/23 at 3:04pm

k-ron78 said: "MemorableUserName said: "k-ron78 said: "Just sitting here waiting to watch a play skewering performative wokeness while being told to wear a mask for the first time in a year:"

In case anyone is unaware, this is not a requirement at all performances. Second Stage has certain Mask Mandated Performances where masks are required, so that audience members who would be more comfortable in a masked audience can choose those shows. There are maybe 8 through the entire run--mostly Wednesday matinees and only two evening performances: tonight and next Tuesday. Anyone who would prefer not to wear a mask has about six dozen other performances available to them.

Complaining about wearing a mask when you specifically chose a mask mandated performance and could have chosen from numerous others is ridiculous."

1) I didn’t.

2) If my joke gets your dander up, this probably isn’t the play for you.

You made a joke?

[perfectpenguin]

Posted: 3/29/23 at 5:15pm

Ok before this gets out of hand and very off topic- yes, Second Stage offers a handful of masked performances for The Thanksgiving Play. Those dates are 3/28, 4/04, and all Wednesday matinees.

If you feel more comfortable in a completely masked performance, then these are the dates for you.

If you do not want to be required to wear a mask, then select a date other than a Wednesday matinee. 

If you are unable to attend a Wednesday matinee but would like to wear a mask anyway, you can do that too. 

Now that that’s covered, did anyone attend today? Thoughts, comments? 

[SondheimTesori]

Posted: 3/31/23 at 2:08am

Ugh I hate to say that I did not love this. I am a really big admirer of Fasthorse’s general artistic and political mandate, as well as her previous collaborations with other Indigenous artists & theatermakers. Sadly,  I found both this play and production extremely lacking.

I completely  agree with the sentiment that this is a one-joke play. I think there is real satirical possibility in exploring the myopia and self-righteousness of white liberals (especially in a post-2020 discursive landscape), but I found the satire here to be rather toothless and the execution scattered. There is an intense redundancy to the well-intentioned, performative one-liners that we hear the characters (especially Finneran and Foley) cycle through again and again. In general, the characters all feel quite poorly drawn and lacking in specifity, as if they’re held together by repetitive lines of dialogue. Even within an elevated comedy that plays with archetype, there needs to be some richness/ dynamism of character to prod deeper. Having the characters essentially repeat surface level one-liners with little variation gets tiresome. Sadly, it also nullifies the overall political ambition of the play. I found the presentation of real-life classroom examples shared between each scene via video to be way more subversive than any of the traditional scenes. 


Furthermore, as the play builds it just grows increasingly unfocused? Little moments of story development and character threads are dropped and then suddenly returned to and then dropped again. Additionally,  Fasthorse loses focus in terms of what she’s skewering and approaches many elements of white liberalism in a rather scattered but still surface-level way. This all leads to the play building to a conclusion that feels simultaneously predictable but also somehow unearned. It never moves past it’s first layer of satirical exploration, but the randomness of the plotting still make some of the climatic moments feel contrived . 

This is not to say there are not some funny moments and that the overall conceit is not interesting!! I just found the actual execution surface- level and lacking in any storytelling finesse or depth. 

I will say whatever merit this play does have- I do not think it is well supported by Chavkin’s direction. I know it’s early in the preview process, so I will give her and her actors some grace. But as of now, there was a lot of dead air and rhythmic issues (that seem to be deadly to any comedy). The play’s structure is already more frustratingly sporadic than propulsive, and the choices didn’t help. The maintenance and building of energy is vital in a heightened comedy like this, and there are many plateaus.  I also think Chavkin failed to find a unity of tone amongst the actors (who all were coming with different modalities). 

I worship Katie Finneran, and am always in awe of her comedic prowess. She is a pro and is delivering a full bodied vocal and physical performance, but the limitations of the character rendered her work outsized and overly- exasperated. She had great moments and she is giving it her all but it doesn’t come close to her best work. I also adore D’Arcy Carden’s television work but feel her lack of theatrical experience (improv work aside) showed. She has such charm and a neat bag of comedic tricks but isn’t a skilled or dynamic enough theatrical performer to make her shoddily written “brainless actress” work. It felt like a collection of some inconsistent moments more than a coherent performance. And she stuck out in her moments with Finneran, esp in terms of theatrical vocal/physical chops.

I thought Foley faired pretty poorly with an even more grating and redundant character. And the great Chris Sullivan gave it his all but also felt failed by the lack of texture and specificity in the writing. It’s still a talented group but at this performance, I did not feel any meshing or harmony in their styles. There was also a lot of timing issues.  I’m sure this will all improve as performances go on, but it was still disappointing to see.

I know this is all quite negative- but I will say that I am rooting for all those involved.  I am really invested in work that is doing something both stylistically and politically bold and just found this underwhelming. But hope this Broadway production plus the play’s national popularity gives Fasthorse the opportunity to keep creating and experimenting. 

 

 

Updated On: 3/31/23 at 02:08 AM

[Theater3232]

Posted: 3/31/23 at 11:12am

Perhaps it should have remained at Playwrights Horizons. Like most of PH's recent plays, it's just under 2 hours with no intermission. Tedium sets in.  Feels amateurish & a one-joke-thing that goes on far too long.  I'd much rather see a revival of a musical at the Hayes, like a transfer of the recent Keen Company revival of Tick Tick Boom.

[ardiem]

Posted: 3/31/23 at 11:35am

SondheimTesori - thanks for sharing your thoughts and so wonderfully describing the elements of the play that didn't work for me as well (though your words are a lot more generous than I'd be using)

[Voter]

Posted: 4/1/23 at 11:58pm

Is there a specific run time for this show or is it just under nearly under 2 hours?

[Robstriker]

Posted: 4/2/23 at 12:34am

When I saw this on March 29th it ran from 708pm-842pm.

[GilmoreGirlO2]

Posted: 4/2/23 at 11:26am

Very much agree with all of SondheimTesori’s sentiments. I was very excited going into this, but unfortunately didn’t think it was very good.

The majority of jokes fell flat for me and, especially in the middle chunk of this show, I found myself bored and ready for the show to be over. The actors are doing what they can with it, but I just found the script to be lacking. There were a few funny moments, but otherwise the jokes felt generic and the storyline was strangely unclear at times (one specific thing: I thought at the beginning Finneran’s character thanks Foley’s character for hiring her, but later in the script she says she hired Foley?).

I also agree that Chavkin’s direction doesn’t help the script. All of the more physical comedy moments and extra non-dialogue bits felt awkward and unmotivated.

Wish I had enjoyed this one more.

[KJisgroovy]

Posted: 4/2/23 at 11:33am

I haven't encountered this play yet (it won't be done in Chicago until next year) but given how frequently it's been performed around the country I assumed it was pretty great. And that cast seems pretty perfect for a comedy. On paper this seemed like a slam dunk. Interested to hear more about what folks didn't like. Is it the production or the material?