Review Roundup: QUEENS Opens at Manhattan Theatre Club

See what the critics are saying about Manhattan Theatre Club's Off-Broadway production of Queens, newly imagined by Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok, and directed by Trip Cullman. 

Queens is an epic drama about hunting for the American Dream, finding family, and facing the ghosts you left behind. In an illegal basement apartment in Queens, multiple generations of immigrant women fight to launch a new life. But when a young Ukrainian woman comes searching for the mother who abandoned her years ago, she forces a reckoning with the impossible choices the women made to survive. Queens chronicles the strivers who sacrificed whole worlds for the chance at something remarkable.

Queens features Brooke Bloom, Emmy Award nominee Anna Chlumsky, Sharlene Cruz, Tony Award nominee Marin Ireland, Tony Award nominee Julia Lester, Nadine Malouf, Andrea Syglowski, and Nicole Villamil.

Martyna Majok returns to MTC following the Broadway premiere of her Pulitzer Prize-winning play Cost of Living, which was Tony-nominated for Best Play in 2023. Trip Cullman directed MTC’s critically acclaimed world premiere of Joshua Harmon’s We Had a World last season, and previously directed the MTC productions of Choir Boy and Murder Ballad. 

The creative team for Queens includes Marsha Ginsberg (Scenic Design), Sarah Laux (Costume Design), Ben Stanton (Lighting Design), Mikaal Sulaiman (Original Music & Sound Design), J. Jared Janas (Wig, Hair & Makeup Design), Jane Guyer Fujita (Dialect Coach), Rocío Mendez (Fight Choreographer), Caparelliotis Casting & Kelly Gillespie (Casting) and Katie Ailinger (Production Stage Manager).

Charles Isherwood, The Wall Street Journal: While “Queens” casts unsparing light on the experience of the women in America, Ms. Majok is hardly sentimental about what they left behind. Emblematic are scenes set in Ukraine in 2016, with Inna and her American-husband-hunting friend Lera (Andrea Syglowski) discussing the unpromising futures in their country.

Gillian Russo, New York Theatre Guide: Save for the opening scene, in which one character punches another in the face, there's not a lot of capital-A Action in Queens. It's a talky play, but the vivid ensemble, under Trip Cullman's direction, gives every conversation a propulsive energy. Their unspoken ambitions and regrets thrum beneath every word they do say. Not every character gets explored in equal depth, and we don't learn how they all got there or where they all go when their time in the apartment comes to and end. But it's a testament to Majok, Cullman, and the cast that we long to know, to ever more deeply understand these women otherwise forced to hide away.

Juan A. Ramirez, Theatrely: Majok’s expansive work lives up to their talents, and allows each of them to shine, capturing two moments (2001 and 2017) at an overcrowded basement apartment in the titular New York borough. The women making do with their exploitative-but-what-can-you-do situation are all from Ukraine, Honduras, Afghanistan and Poland, either striving towards financial independence or temporarily in the country to send money (or wayward relatives) back home. The particulars of their situations are both immaterial to critical analysis and completely the point; a compendium of the world’s ails that drive people to migrate, and which drive the disenfranchised to build strong communities – well, almost always.

Matthew Wexler, One-Minute Critic: Knockout performances across the board get to the heart of Majok’s play with little pity but plenty of humor. If the moments of magical realness feel less than inspired on Marsha Ginsberg’s bifurcated set with billowing curtains to indicate the passage of time, this found sisterhood has plenty in its tank to fuel the evening. References to 9/11 and Trump’s first presidential term ocassionally feel forced, though the spiraling xenophobia creates a chilling backdrop for the women’s intersecting lives.

Average Rating: 85.0%