Dad Don't Read This Off-Broadway Reviews

Smith has written about young people in extremis before: Her “Grief Camp” at Atlantic Theater Company dealt with bereaved children having a good time, often in spite of their own fluctuating will. This play, though, feels like an advance. Her nat...

Smith has written about young people in extremis before: Her “Grief Camp” at Atlantic Theater Company dealt with bereaved children having a good time, often in spite of their own fluctuating will. This play, though, feels like an advance. Her naturalistic dramatic voice — a still-sticky adolescent mixture of wild feeling and zoned-out alienation — comes into better focus here, thanks to the loose, swaggering realism generated by the director, Chloe Claudel.

Dad Don’t Read This is messy and raw and doesn’t really go anywhere, but the fierce energy of its voice and its sharply observed characters–and particularly those moments where the play’s casually realist surface cracks open to reveal a weird...

Dad Don’t Read This is messy and raw and doesn’t really go anywhere, but the fierce energy of its voice and its sharply observed characters–and particularly those moments where the play’s casually realist surface cracks open to reveal a weirder sense of narrative time or a stunning, mystifying image–will keep it in my mind for a long time.

You’ll likely leave Barrow Street impressed by what you’ve seen and surely by the performers. But maybe with only a hazy understanding of what the playwright intended (which was certainly not the case with the more fully realized Wolves, Dance Na...

You’ll likely leave Barrow Street impressed by what you’ve seen and surely by the performers. But maybe with only a hazy understanding of what the playwright intended (which was certainly not the case with the more fully realized Wolves, Dance Nation, and John Proctor). That said, Dad Don’t Read This is highly entertaining and Smith impresses as a playwright ready to break through.

Dad Don’t Read This is fueled by the intensity of these small moments that accumulate: how you tell your friends things, the tiny misunderstandings that create an ever-growing wedge, the petty jealousies of who hangs out with whom and when, the thr...

Dad Don’t Read This is fueled by the intensity of these small moments that accumulate: how you tell your friends things, the tiny misunderstandings that create an ever-growing wedge, the petty jealousies of who hangs out with whom and when, the thrill of dancing around in your room, the feverish anticipation of hearing something new about the person at school whom you all dislike (or maybe not). It's like we're peeking into moments we shouldn’t: There’s an intoxicating danger to listening to young girls break up and make up, these tiny moments representative of the choices they make to become themselves.

Dad Don’t Read This resolves, in many ways, but there’s an unfilled spot left at its center. Amid the warmth and humor of her portrait of teenagehood, Smith is touching on a cold and bracing thing. Sometimes, people, like pixels, can just flicker...

Dad Don’t Read This resolves, in many ways, but there’s an unfilled spot left at its center. Amid the warmth and humor of her portrait of teenagehood, Smith is touching on a cold and bracing thing. Sometimes, people, like pixels, can just flicker out.