Review Roundup: SHIFTERS Makes North American Premiere at Cherry Lane Theatre

Cherry Lane Theatre is presenting the North American premiere of Shifters, the acclaimed new play by Olivier Award-nominated playwright Benedict Lombe, following its sold-out engagements at London's Bush Theatre and in the West End. Read the reviews.

A love story exploring memory, identity, and second chances, Shifters follows Dre and Des, two young Black professionals whose lives are forever altered after reconnecting years following a life-changing romance. As they revisit old memories and confront new realities, the pair must navigate the distance between who they once were and who they have become.

Heather Agyepong reprises her Olivier Award-nominated performance as Des after originating the role in London. She stars opposite Daniel Ezra, known for Netflix's All American and the upcoming film The Running Man, who takes on the role of Dre.

The production is directed by BAFTA nominee and Evening Standard Theatre Award winner Lynette Linton, whose recent credits include The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind and Not Your Superwoman.

Shifters is presented by Eleanor Lloyd Productions and Chuchu Nwagu Productions, in association with Sonia Friedman Productions, marking the play's first production in North America after its acclaimed London run.

Roma Torre, New York Stage Review: Shifters is a meditation on first love – love found, love lost and love rediscovered. Playwright Benedict Lombe deserves high praise for crafting this profoundly universal work because what starts out as a fun little romcom turns into an existential riff on all the important stuff in our lives.

Thom Geier, Culture Sauce: Shifters cribs from Constellations in other ways too. Instead of the color-shifitng balloons that hovered over the players in the original 2012 London production and the 2015 Broadway transfer, Linton places her two actors in a black cube surrounded by dangling strips of light. (Alex Berry designed the sets and costumes, and Neil Austin supplied the lighting.) The hashtag of lights shift in hue and intensity to mark the jumps in time as well as the mood of individual scenes. They also give us something to watch as the two leads drag out their will-they-or-won’t-they exchanges. Shifters runs 45 minutes longer than Payne’s play, but it feels slighter and less substantial. Even so, you’ll find yourself appreciating the engaging performances of two star-crossed souls who find their futures not in the stars but in themselves.

Gillian Russo, New York Theatre Guide: Despite these individually appealing elements, though, I felt like I'd seen so many versions of the same story before within the past few years alone. There's Broadway's current Maybe Happy Ending and Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York), Off-Broadway's recent Gruesome Playground Injuries revival, even the 2023 film Past Lives: All these right-person-wrong-circumstance rom-drams streaked with humor yielded already diminishing returns as I watched one after the other, dealing Shifters an unfortunate hand as number five in line. Once it's over, the play that deals with the collapsing folds of time and memory ironically fades away into them like a dream, save for the indelible and haunting glow of the lights.

Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater: But playwright Benedict Lombe, whose debut play four years ago, “Lava,” won the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, clearly wants “Shifters” to be something deeper and more distinctive than a typical romcom. She attempts this in various ways, some more successful than others.

Charles Isherwood, The Wall Street Journal: “Shifters” toggles so frequently between time periods that the author often resorts to having one of the characters baldly announce their age before each passage, a prosaic if necessary device given the single costumes the actors wear and the lack of sets other than black lacquered boxes serving as seats as needed.

Charles Isherwood, The Wall Street Journal: “Shifters” toggles so frequently between time periods that the author often resorts to having one of the characters baldly announce their age before each passage, a prosaic if necessary device given the single costumes the actors wear and the lack of sets other than black lacquered boxes serving as seats as needed.

Average Rating: 66.7%