Rob Weinert Kendt

Some of Cromwell's stylizations go a bit too hard, honestly. While Mikaal Sulaimanthat's sound design, Femi Tomowo's music, and Jen Schriever's lighting are often very appropriately and effectively disorienting, and a few transitions blossom beautifully into quasi-musical numbers (and why not, when you have Andre De Shields in your cast?), a few of the director's gambits play like just that, as gambits: A key flashback is segmented into bright-line subdivisions, as if clicking through a vintage slide carousel; one phone conversation has an offstage character's voice played, awkwardly, by a clarinet.