Marc Miller takes a look at Corsicana at Playwrights Horizons:
Will Arbery is an outlier. His previous play at Playwrights Horizons, Heroes of the Fourth Turning, introduced us New York sophisticates to a subculture we'd probably never met, and hoped we never would: Catholic rural conservatives, the sort to strike fear in the typical Upper West Sider's heart. And he humanized them, and offered a cross-cultural bridge the theater too seldom provides. His new Playwrights Horizons premiere, Corsicana, similarly plunks us down in a habitat we probably know little of, the small titular Texas town, and introduces us to people we likely wouldn't meet on the 1 train or at Yankee Stadium. This time, Arbery's effort is well-meaning and affectionate, but rather passive. Corsicana has some lovely passages, but it also has a lot of air. |
