ATW Digest - 'Zooman' revival opens - read the reviews
By Andy Propst on Mar 25, 2009 | In ATW Digest
AmericanTheaterWeb
Review - Zooman and the Sign
Revisiting Urban Violence of the Late '70s
New York Times
A Cold Soul, and the Society That Put It on Ice
The concluding production of the Signature Theater Company’s season devoted to the Negro Ensemble Company is a lackluster revival.
New York Daily News
'Zooman and the Sign' is worth your time
In "Zooman and the Sign," the murder of a 12-year-old black girl, Jinny, pits her grieving family against their community in late-70s Philadelphia.
Associated Press
Violence Scars a Scared Community in 'Zooman'
A randomly violent, sociopathic teenage killer; the angry and grieving family of one of his young victims, and a black community either too frightened or too numbed into apathy by repeated gang violence to speak out and identify the killers.
Variety
Review: Zooman and the Sign
...but thesp-turned-helmer Stephen McKinley Henderson has added to the play's pacing problems with some deeply confused direction. In initial production and its previous revivals (in 1983 and 1994), the play was declared incendiary, if problematic and occasionally flat. Now, unfortunately, it's problematic, flat and no longer unique.
Back Stage
Zooman and the Sign reviewed by Erik Haagensen
Charles Fuller's Zooman and the Sign is a problem play, the problem being the social deprivations and concomitant personal failures that lead to gang violence, senseless murders, and terrified citizenry.
TheaterMania
Review: Zooman and the Sign
Charles Fuller's play about a neighborhood crime lacks urgency and vitality after nearly three decades.
Talkin' Broadway
Review: Zooman and the Sign
It takes less time than you might think for a play to go from hopelessly harsh to hermetically hardboiled. Charles Fuller’s Zooman and the Sign needed only 28 years - at least judging by the restless new production the Signature Theatre Company is giving it at Peter Norton Space. . . .
CurtainUp
Review: Zooman and the Sign
Fuller's play offers no solutions to the endless cycle of problems that destroy young lives, but it certainly provides a powerfully revealing glimpse into a part of American life most would like to forget
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