The Great Privation

Closing: March 26, 2025

The Great Privation - 2025 Off-Broadway History , Info & More

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Playwrights Horizons

416 West 42nd St.(between 9th & 10th Aves) New York, NY 10036

Run Type Limited Run

Market Off-Broadway

Previews February 26, 2025

You think, we carry our ancestors with us?

No. I do think there are hints they leave for us though. In our walk. Or maybe I don’t know. In the soil. I don’t know.

1832: a mother and daughter stand vigil behind the African Baptist Church in Philadelphia at the grave of a recently deceased loved one. Today, on the same grounds: another strangely familiar mother and daughter work as counselors at what is now a sleepaway camp. Timelines collide, horrors are buried and revealed, but love never lacks.

The Great Privation (How to flip ten cents into a dollar) is a darkly comic play about our nation’s long practice of harming Black bodies in the name of scientific progress, our responsibility to time, and the role joy plays in living with a history we cannot change.

The Great Privation - 2025 - Off-Broadway Cast

Crystal Lucas-Perry

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FEATURED REVIEWS FOR The Great Privation

REVIEW: ‘The Great Privation’ is about the past informing the present

From: Hollywood Soapbox By: John Soltes Date: 2025-03-11

8 / 10

The Great Privation features solid performances from its cast, especially Lucas-Perry and Vickerie, who hardly leave the stage for the intermissionless work. The two actors, along with Holiday and Jackson, seamlessly transition between the two time periods with ease, sometimes within seconds. They adopt slightly different voices and embody different characters, but again they keep the channels between the generations open, allowing influence to seep in. Robinson, who premiered this play at Theatre 503 in London, is definitely someone to watch in the theatrical space. Her ideas and perspectives are most welcome beneath the proscenium, and The Great Privation is one of the strongest plays of the spring season.

‘The Great Privation’ digs up the bones of one family’s history (Off Broadway review)

From: Culture Sauce By: Thom Geier Date: 2025-03-11

7 / 10

At times, The Great Privation can also feel a bit diffuse and undercooked. Some scenes meander pleasantly without advancing either the story or the underlying themes, and the ending plays more like the result of exhaustion than intention. This feels like a show that could have benefited from another revision or two, to tighten its time-jumping connections and to sharpen its point of view. (There are no clear antagonists in the present day, which deprives those scenes of dramatic tension.) But I’d gladly spend more time with these characters, as authentic and engaging and alive as the talented cast has made them, and to sink into future worlds that spring from Robinson’s fertile imagination.