Winner of the 2022 Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Play, Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic bursts onto Broadway after MTC’s highly acclaimed extended, sold-out Off-Broadway run. In 1944, a Jewish couple in Paris desperately awaits news of their missing family. More than 70 years later, the couple’s great-grandchildren find themselves facing the same question as their ancestors: "Are we safe?" This celebrated work by the author of Bad Jews and Significant Other is about history, home and the effects of an ancient hatred. The New York Times calls it "thought-provoking, heart-wrenching and wickedly funny." Directing is David Cromer, a Tony Award® winner for The Band's Visit.
As a three-hour-and-two-intermission multigenerational family epic that’s Serious But Also Funny — and full of prolonged opportunities for actors to shout — it’s essentially purpose-built to win awards, and it has. Off Broadway, it nabbed Outstanding Play and Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play from the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle, respectively. It has the shape of something profound and easily laudable, but inside that outline, though it doesn’t shy away from gnarly questions, it often feels showy in its engagement with them. Like that guy who corners you at the grad-school mixer, Prayer for the French Republic is smart and it has a heart in there, but its primary interest is in its own demonstrations of rhetoric.
With so many characters and so many themes, the work could feel overwhelming. But Cromer, as he has done so often, ensures the show flows smoothly and feels much shorter than its running time. However, neither the play, which can feel overwritten at times, nor the production is perfect. For example, Takeshi Kata’s set design is visually too spare for such a long show while Sarah Laux’s costumes feel uninspired. Still, we should be profoundly grateful that a work of such ambition, scope and importance has made it to the stage, not once but twice. The many questions the play poses, not just Marcelle’s, are like most prayers: necessary but not easily answered.
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