9 / 10
It isn’t hard to see what Staff Meal is about (among other topics, questioning the value of weird theater), but the way it articulates the dance of service and fancy is what lingers on the palate. Koogler stokes our affection for the comforts of civilization but also underscores how fragile they are. I’m no food critic but take my advice: book a table before word gets out.
9 / 10
Without recourse to literalism, Koogler conjures the quintessence of 2020 — the absurdity and fragility, the aimlessness and mental rabbit holes, waiting and grief, the forgetting how to talk to other people, listening to yourself and thinking I sound like an alien in a person suit. Staff Meal feels like a portal: We tumble through its funny, eerie evocation of the moment that made—is still making—our present, and we come out the other side feeling, for all its ebb toward emptiness, full.
Playwrights Horizons has extended its world premiere production of Staff Meal, Abe Koogler's funny, startling new play.
Read the reviews for Staff Meal at Plawyrights Horizons.
