AmericanTheaterWeb Original News & Reviews

Updated October 27, 2008 - 9:41AM

Village Voice

All My Sons Gets Gimmicky, To Be or Not to Be Goes Flat, and Kindness Rides the Downbeat by Michael Feingold

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Updated October 20, 2008

New York Magazine

Scott Brown on Kindness

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Updated October 19, 2008

nytheatre.com

Review: Kindness

Time Out New York

Review: Kindness
A cancer-stricken mother and her withdrawn son visit the Big Apple in Adam Rapp's stark new drama.

Back Stage

Kindness reviewed by Mark Peikert
Playwright Adam Rapp may need to declare a moratorium on manipulative women and vulnerable men. These two archetypes are beginning to yield diminishing returns.

First Night Reviews

New York Times

Welcome to New York; Now Go Find a Friend
Adam Rapp’s listless new drama is about two Midwesterners who forge unlikely friendships with a pair of New Yorkers.

New York Daily News

The 'Kindness' of strangers in play
The sudden, sneaky appearance of a hammer during a play is a surefire way to keep an audience on edge, particularly when someone has mentioned having fantasies about ball-peening somebody's brains in. Will they do it?

Star-Ledger

A kinder, gentler play from Adam Rapp

Associated Press

'Kindness' examines good deeds in a big, bad world

Bloomberg.com

Rapp's Trashy Melodrama Reeks of Violence, Not Much `Kindness': John Simon
Adam Rapp's ``Kindness,'' running off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons, is a four-character play with no stars but decent actors, questionable credibility but a good deal of slickness.

Variety

Review: Kindness
On the whole, Adam Rapp is a lot more fun when he's being crude and rude. "Kindness," however, finds the scribe in a mellower mood, sympathetically observing a Midwestern mother and her son on a sentimental visit to New York.

TheaterMania

Review: Kindness
Adam Rapp's taut and involving dark comedy about a mother and son visiting New York is at turns hilarious and unsettling.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: Kindness
In relative terms, Kindness lives up to its title. The only burned-out wasteland serving as the setting for Adam Rapp’s new play at Playwrights Horizons’s Peter Jay Sharp Theater is New York’s Theatre District. In terms of murders, there are only two: one actual (but offstage), and one contemplated. And the story really does involve four people doing good things - or reasonable facsimiles thereof - for each other. Does this mean that the famously fringe Rapp is finally losing his touch? .

CurtainUp

Review: Kindness