Theater review by Helen Shaw
At Manhattan Theatre Club, Will Davis directs a disappointing production of Jaclyn Backhaus's drama about a young Midwestern woman trying to negotiate the conflicting appeals of adventure and family. It's a tonal rollercoaster, jerking so sharply into grief and back to awkward comedy, that the characters seem to have no real feelings at all. The primary conflict of the play has no bite: Basminder (Shazi Raja) worries that her parents (Purva Bedi and Alok Tewari) and brother Iggy (Sathya Sridharan) won't want her to move to Madison to open a bar, yet…they seem basically unopposed to it. Luckily for the play, she later meets a shaggy white barfly (Nate Miller), who probes her on her Punjabi heritage, totters into a bit of light racism and then backpedals into being sweet. Their exchanges seem polished and crisp; the family stuff, especially when tragedy strikes, seems like the work of a far less developed playwright.
Manhattan Theatre Club (Off Broadway). By Jaclyn Backhaus. Dir. Will Davis. With ensemble cast. Running time: 2hrs. One intermission.
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