8 / 10
Dad Don’t Read This resolves, in many ways, but there’s an unfilled spot left at its center. Amid the warmth and humor of her portrait of teenagehood, Smith is touching on a cold and bracing thing. Sometimes, people, like pixels, can just flicker out.
10 / 10
Smith has written about young people in extremis before: Her “Grief Camp” at Atlantic Theater Company dealt with bereaved children having a good time, often in spite of their own fluctuating will. This play, though, feels like an advance. Her naturalistic dramatic voice — a still-sticky adolescent mixture of wild feeling and zoned-out alienation — comes into better focus here, thanks to the loose, swaggering realism generated by the director, Chloe Claudel.
Eliya Smith's Dad Don't Read This will be recorded for inclusion in the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
Dad Don't Read This, directed by Chloe Claudel and starring Drama Desk winner Amalia Yoo, will present a final one-week extension at Greenwich House Theater before closing.
Following its run at St. Luke's Theatre, Eliya Smith's Dad Don't Read This transferred to Greenwich House Theater. Read the reviews for Dad Don't Read This here!
Eliya Smith's DAD DON'T READ THIS, a New York Times Critic's Pick directed by Chloe Claudel, transfers to Greenwich House Theater following a sold-out, twice-extended run at St. Luke's Theatre.
