Review Roundup: TO MY GIRLS at Second Stage; Read the Reviews!

Second Stage Theater's world premiere of JC Lee's To My Girls, directed by Stephen Brackett, officially opened on Tuesday, April 12, 2022 at Second Stage's Off-Broadway home, The Tony Kiser Theater (305 West 43rd Street).

The cast includes Bryan Batt ("Mad Men," Jeffrey), Jay Armstrong Johnson (On the Town, Hands on a Hardbody), Carman Lacivita (Marvin's Room), Maulik Pancholy (Grand Horizons), Noah J. Ricketts (Frozen, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical), and Britton Smith (Be More Chill, Shuffle Along).

Let's see what the critics are saying!

---

Jesse Green, The New York Times: That the routine must pass as one of the play's high points is part of the problem, indicating how little is happening otherwise. Yes, one character sleeps with another, upsetting a third, but nothing much comes of it. The political and generational arguments, not exactly fresh in the first place, change no one's mind, perhaps because, as in "The Boys in the Band," everyone's blitzed within minutes of arrival. (The play's title is a toast.) What the high-octane margaritas do for the characters, the quick-sketch rhythms of the writing do for the drama: delink action from reaction. Expediency is all.

Robert Hofler, The Wrap: Way over the top defines the characters in JC Lee's new comedy, "To My Girls," which opened Tuesday at Second Stage's Tony Kiser Theater. Everybody on stage here is a souped-up version of Emory. Each of them relentlessly cracks jokes, swishes, forms a chorus line, wears wild clothes (costumes by Sarafina Bush) and ends each zinger with a hurricane-force diphthong.

Jesse Oxfeld, New York Stage Review: Don't misunderstand. To My Girls is often laugh-out-loud funny, in the bitchy, catty way gay men always are in plays about gay men. Playwright JC Lee is great with a one-liner. And I should confess that I am the sort of gay man who is allergic to group vacations, shared houses, and the Real Housewives-style drama they inspire.

Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater: What's most cringeworthy about "To My Girls," which is running at Second Stage's Tony Kiser Theater through April 24, is that Lee grafts his insights onto a play whose nearly every scene - whether meant to make you laugh, or make you think, or move the plot along - feels imposed by the playwright, (the result of the playwright's artificial insemination, to use the kind of sex-adjacent metaphor employed in the play), rather than emerging naturally from the characters.

Christian Lewis, Theatrely: It is refreshing for a comedy-indeed, this is without a doubt the funniest play of the season-to fully and openly admit that its characters are imperfect and messy. They make mistakes, they are hypocritical, they call each other out but don't listen to their own advice, and they say offensive things and shrug it off with a campy joke. They hide their issues under fluff, shielding their deep personal flaws under rainbow caftans and Instagram thirst traps.

To post a comment, you must register and login.