Review Roundup: KRISTINA WONG, SWEATSHOP OVERLORD Opens Off-Broadway

Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord opened at New York Theatre Workshop (79 E 4th Street, New York, NY 10003), on Thursday November 4, for a limited run through Sunday November 21, 2021.

On Day 3 of the COVID-19 pandemic, NYTW Usual Suspect Kristina Wong began sewing masks out of old bedsheets and bra straps on her Hello Kitty sewing machine. Before long, she was leading the Auntie Sewing Squad, a work-from-home sweatshop of hundreds of volunteers-including children and her own mother-to fix the U.S. public health care system while in quarantine. It was a feminist care utopia forming in the midst of crisis. Or was it a mutual aid doomsday cult?

As the demand for masks abates and we begin to return safely to space, Kristina is beginning to put her life together post-pandemic cult leadership. With hilarity and boundless generosity, she invites the audience in on her work building community in isolation, while reflecting on what we've been through and imagining what we want to become. NYTW Usual Suspect Chay Yew (The Architecture of Loss, Oedipus El Rey) directs.

See what the critics are saying...

---

Laura Collins-Hughes, The New York Times: "Sweatshop Overlord" sags a bit in its last third, and one moment meant to be solemn is puzzling instead. But Wong is good company and an accomplished storyteller, and she and Yew have made a show that is both heartening and cathartic. Tripping our collective memories of a strange, scary, isolated time, it asks us to recall them together. Which helps, actually. Back out on the street afterward, we're lighter - and, thanks to the Aunties, imbued with hope.

Helen Shaw, New York Magazine/Vulture: So here it is, a show about the COVID era. We knew it was coming. How could it not? But it's also an interesting test for theories about the palatability of something so ... relevant. Some folks have said they don't want to see any pandemic plays. Others have said that they hope that our artists are the ones to help us understand and think about what we've been through. (I am in both camps, on alternating days.) And in an unscientific poll of the single person I saw it with, I found that some folks do still find our near history too painful to watch even when it's presented with such brio.

David Finkle, New York Stage Review: Wong puts her money where her insistent mouth is. Wong also makes certain that what she sews provides meaningful reaping. It may be that on leaving her presence, spectators will give serious thought to where their money is going nowadays as well as to considering what they're going to sew in the future.

Thom Geier, The Wrap: Wong remains a compelling, irrepressible onstage presence, whether she's railing against injustice or recounting her experience with a vaginal cyst in starkly graphic detail. And she's boosted enormously by Junghyun Georgia Lee's vibrant set, with a back wall of 1,400 face masks and a stage that reproduces Wong's sewing area with stitched fabric items, from oversize pincushions/chairs to a fabric version of that Hello Kitty sewing machine.

Diep Tran, New York Theatre Guide: Wong is an energetic and engaging performer, with an everywoman appeal (no small feat considering that, as Wong points out, an Asian face has been considered foreign and dangerous during this pandemic). When Wong describes how going outside at the height of the pandemic in 2020 felt like going into battle, and Wong is crawling on her forearms and knees as she's saying this, the audience understands exactly what she felt. We may not have crawled on our stomach to go to the Post Office, but putting on our masks and gloves to go outside then did feel like going into a war.

Joey Sims, Theatrely: Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord is an exuberant release of a show, a total joy to behold. Wong unfolds her tale of a ragtag group of quarantined volunteers who sewed thousands of masks with boundless, chaotic energy. But the show, which opened tonight at New York Theatre Workshop, also never loses sight of an essential fact: none of this should have been necessary.

Raven Snook, Time Out New York: The first half of the show, which chronicles the early days of her endeavor, is generally tighter; once she starts stitching in multiple social-justice concerns, it gets a bit lopsided. Yet the play's points are sharp and bear repeating. In the emerging genre of pandemic theater, Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord is haute couture.

To post a comment, you must register and login.