| A small gem in a large setting. Adrienne Kennedy’s OHIO STATE MURDERS is a sterling and precise miniature; it’s quick and sharp. Even when it’s done well, as it is here, there’s isn’t much to say about it. McDonald is impeccable, and it’s thrilling as always to see her—she sings without music—but the play doesn’t develop beyond what you expect. The depiction of racial hatred and its terrible consequence is by now sadly familiar. You watch it knowing that the light at the end of the tunnel is a train. It’s one of Kennedy’s least structurally adventurous plays so the story is on its own; it’s unembroidered. The stage design, which is beautiful and strange, promises more than the play can deliver and seems to decrease it. Oddly, Kennedy has finally landed on a more audacious Broadway with one of her least intrepid works. More please. |
