Review Roundup: Aubrey Plaza and More Star in LET'S LOVE! at Atlantic Theater Company

The world premiere of Let’s Love!, written by Academy Award winner Ethan Coen and directed by Tony Award nominee Neil Pepe, opens tonight at the Linda Gross Theater! Let’s Love! is a comedy, a trio of one acts, that explores love in all its miserable glory. Read the reviews!

The cast of Let’s Love! features Atlantic Ensemble Member Chris Bauer (“The Wire”), Dylan Gelula (“Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”), Dion Graham (“The First 48”), Atlantic Ensemble Member Mary McCann (The Welkin), Nellie McKay (A Play is a Poem), Golden Globe & Emmy Award nominee Aubrey Plaza (“The White Lotus”), Noah Robbins (“Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”), CJ Wilson (Manchester by the Sea), and Mary Wiseman (“Star Trek: Discovery’).

Let’s Love! features sets by Riccardo Hernandez, costumes by Peggy Schnitzer, lighting by Reza Behjat, sound by David Van Tieghem, original compositions by Nellie McKay, set decorations and props by Faye Armon-Troncoso, and casting by The Telsey Office: Will Cantler, CSA, Destiny Lily, CSA.

Michael Sommers, New York Stage Review: Hey there, straight adults: Atlantic Theater Company offers Let’s Love!, a trio of short, not-so-sweet comedies on heterosexual affairs. Oh, the rest of us can enjoy the program, too, since love’s emotional confusions are known to most people, one way or another. Neil Pepe, the company’s artistic director, stages the plays in a typically neat, well-acted Atlantic production that premiered on Wednesday. All that, plus an impish Nellie McKay has been engaged to stroll out and croon little tunes at a baby grand between the acts. There’s no intermission, so you’ll be in and out of the theater in 90 minutes.

Frank Scheck, New York Stage Review: The endlessly raunchy Let’s Love! revels in its own outrageousness, feeling like an evening of Playboy magazine cartoons come to life. It’s funny as hell, but you’ll feel the need to take a shower afterwards.

Caroline Cao, New York Theatre Guide: Let’s Love! is a comic, microscopic introspection on sex, relationships, and love across three disparate stories — nothing more, nothing less. Perhaps the show arrives with expectations of ambition due to its playwright: Ethan Coen of the Coen Brothers, who previously penned the existential play trio Almost an Evening. If that show aimed to be the apple in Eden, the more modest Let’s Love! wants to be a box of bittersweet chocolate.

Robert Hofler, The Wrap: What’s very entertaining about “Let’s Love!” and even a bit jolting is that three of the female characters (Mary McCann, Aubrey Plaza, Mary Wiseman) get all the dirtiest lines. In other words, Cohen is writing female characters like no other playwright today. In light of all this feminine off-color, it’s no surprise that four of the male characters (Chris Bauer, Dion Graham, Noah Robbins, CJ Wilson) emerge as very reactive, if not a little colorless at times.

Kimberly Ramirez, Talkin' Broadway: For all its exclamation mark, Let's Love! confuses cruelty for comedy and explores love more through crude provocations and bodily functions than genuine emotional commitment. If Coen is trying to expose human folly or moral decrepitude, he doesn't build the coherence or analytical distance that true satire needs. In a tacked-on, final tableau, the entire ensemble suddenly joins McKay in a deliberately cacophonous "love song." Perhaps this jam wants to suggest harmony in imperfection, but it plays like a curtain call for ideas unearned.

Average Rating: 62.0%