The Door Slams, A Glass Trembles
Closing: May 10, 2026The Door Slams, A Glass Trembles - 2026 Off-Broadway History , Info & More
La Mama (The Downstairs)
66 E 4th Street New York City, NY 10003
The play unfolds over the course of a year as family and friends gather for dinners that repeat, fragment, and morph into dinners in a sanatorium in the Alps. The play collapses past and present. The extraordinary manifests within the mundane, humor sits alongside unease; intimate confessions give way to philosophical musings, and private lives echo the noise of the public arena. With its finely calibrated balance of wit, lyricism, and political awareness, The Door Slams, A Glass Trembles becomes a meditation on time, responsibility, and the fragile moments of connection that persist even as reality increasingly feels like chaos.
The Door Slams, A Glass Trembles - 2026 - Off-Broadway Cast
FEATURED REVIEWS FOR The Door Slams, A Glass Trembles
A Perfume of Life!
9 / 10
The fact is that the play’s action and dialogue support a bigger purpose, and just narrating them, scene-by-scene, cannot convey the entrancing mood and movement of the play — and indeed, such telling might make it all seem inconsequential. But the truth is that the audience is getting more than just words and action: as staged, through these fine performances, we are transported toward something profound. We come, movingly, face-to-face with loss and endings--via a range of departures. But there’s also something more: the hints of new possibilities for us all, a perfume of life whose vivid aroma keeps our hearts open — as well as open to quest, gamble, and adventure.
Review: The Door Slams, A Glass Trembles at La MaMa
7 / 10
A meditation on the experience of time inspired loosely by Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, Talking Band’s new piece, The Door Slams, A Glass Trembles has a bit of the aura of durational performance art. It’s only a little more than an hour long, but it still stretches and condenses time with curious effect: languid, meditative moments; skips and repetitions; whorls and loops. It is a scripted play (by Paul Zimet, who also directs)—as well as being choreographed and scored with precision (by Flannery Gregg and Ellen Maddow respectively)—but the content of it is less important, even less interesting, than the experiencing of it. The play’s action is set almost outside of time: a little pocket universe–“a month in the country”–that is sometimes the dining room of a home in a rural town in the present day and sometimes the dining room of the Berghof Sanatorium before World War I.
Category
by Nicole Rosky - May 8, 2026
La MaMa in association with Talking Band is now presenting the world premiere of The Door Slams, A Glass Trembles written and directed by Paul Zimet with music by Ellen Maddow. Let's see what the critics had to say about the new play...
by Chloe Rabinowitz - February 5, 2026
La MaMa in association with Talking Band will present the world premiere of The Door Slams, A Glass Trembles written and directed by Paul Zimet with music by Ellen Maddow.
The Door Slams, A Glass Trembles History
Other Productions of The Door Slams, A Glass Trembles
| 2026 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
Videos
