DEINDE Review: Larry Kunofsky, New York Theater Review

Photo by Justin Hoch at jhoch.com. Pictured: David Ian Lee, Nitya Vidyasagar. Post by August Schulenburg.

OK, so I’ve fallen a wee bit behind on these review responses! With the play long over, I’m tempted to let the remaining reviews go, but I still regret not doing this for Menders, and so will feel better if I see it through.

Larry Kunofsky’s review to DEINDE is a joyous affair – not just because he liked it, but because reading it feels like hanging out with him (yes, we are friends, if anyone is actually reading this who doesn’t know that). It is full of all the dazzling verbal energy that powers his plays, and it is humbling to have it trained on my work.

There’s lots to engage with: his quip that  most Off-Broadway plays “are about white people grieving somebody who dies before the play begins” (gulp, wait until he sees Honey Fist and Sans Merci!); his linking of DEINDE to Lorca’s Duende (as with most interesting linkages, not intentional); and his plot synopsis that makes me believe in plot synopses again.

I love this quote about Will’s set: “the clear plastic flat screens and pale blue and green and purple of the floor and the furniture make everything warm and remote at the same time.” He also dedicates an entire paragraph to a costume piece worn by Daniel Nemerov that makes you wish more people treated reviews like something that could be fun for them to write.

But of course, this is my favorite:

“Heather Cohn’s direction is clean and fluid. She has a way of turning the sci-fi elements of the story into living metaphor. And that’s why Deinde is better than The Avengers. There’s poetry here, a much deeper special effect.  And it’s both a visual and lyrical poetry, a Cohn-Schulenburg concoction not be found at the multiplex.”

‘Nuff said. Read the whole thing here, if you’re still curious about a play from the future that’s now in the past.