When Tally, a down-and-out actress and gig worker, returns to her rural hometown, she swipes right on a disgraced high-school teacher fresh out of an ankle bracelet. Lowcountry is a dark, twisted romcom about the psychic distress of looking for love in the digital age and the carceral state.
All of it is solid context for the world that these two characters occupy, but most of it is told and not felt. As their mismatched date barrels onward, David starts to worry that Tally is making a show of her own empathy by being interested in him, and you start to worry that Rosebrock, as a playwright, is doing the same. It’s not that Tally and David’s charged cross-interrogation of each other isn’t a compelling situation, but Rosebrock keeps commenting on it from the outside—especially via Tally’s monologues that eddy like Substack posts—instead of enacting it.
Eventually, there are revelations. Abby Rosebrock’s new play is evidently intended to be intriguing, even seductive in the slow way it parses out the info, with a payoff of an ending that is deliberately shocking. But from the get-go “Lowcountry” was easily the most exasperating production I’ve sat through all year.
| 2025 | Off-Broadway |
Atlantic Theater Company World Premiere Off-Broadway |
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