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When will supposed safety for some cease to mean annihilation for others?
Though its surrounded by heavy clouds, Harmons play is plenty sharp and by no means gloomy.
Zingy, morbid humor and motormouthed diatribes are the playwrights weapons of choice, not lyricism or sentimentality.
Yet theres a savviness toPrayers construction that makes it ring false.
Shes a heavyweight champ of one of Harmons favorite dramatic forms: the amped-up tirade.
How much you respond toPrayermay ultimately rest on your taste for such harangues.
I admit to finding them hard to follow not intellectually but emotionally.
They leave me cold and a little suspicious.
When characters stray for a moment into quieter, more tender territory, it feels obligatory rather than organic.
you’ve got the option to sense the play itching to get back into the boxing ring.
(The fact that Ranson and Benhamou share their characters names is coincidental.)
(Sorry, I just, I have never had anything this, uhm, good before?
In my entire life?
she rhapsodizes over a croissant.)
As Paul Verlaine and Hayao Miyazaki put it,the wind is rising.
Thematically, it all checks out.
They feel like a play weve seen before.
Theatrically, the Salomons are most compelling when they break out of their frame.
Does the missing piece make him a rationalist or a coward?
Is assimilation a dishonorable way to stay alive, or islivingwhat matters and honor a mere scutcheon?
Prayer for the French Republicis at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.
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