Jesse
Green

April 20, 2023

But for Larissa FastHorse, the author of “The Thanksgiving Play,” farce is not an end in itself. Rather, it is the hilarious envelope in which she delivers a brutal satire about mythmaking, and thus, in a way, about theater itself. The stories we create can do almost as much harm as the false histories they purport to commemorate, she shows. And well-meaning people can, too.

Brittani
Samuel

April 21, 2023

Satire is one of the American theater’s greatest tools. At its best, the genre is both an effective pedagogical tool for change and a sharply-aimed weapon for critical analysis. Larissa FastHorse’s “The Thanksgiving Play” only grazes both marks.

Greg
Evans

April 20, 2023

Opening tonight at the Hayes Theater, The Thanksgiving Play, directed by Rachel Chavkin (Hadestown, Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812) and starring D’Arcy Carden, Katie Finneran, Scott Foley, and Chris Sullivan – all of whom, director and cast, have done much better work on other stages – is the sort of easy-target satire that should by all rights have sophisticated New York audiences seeing their own foibles and smiling at their own political vulnerabilities.

So where exactly does this Thanksgiving go awry? Starts with the soup, ends with the nuts.

Adam
Feldman

April 20, 2023

FastHorse effectively roasts her characters as turkeys, trussed by their own self-consciousness. In a swift 90 minutes, The Thanksgiving Play delivers solid laughs at the expense of targets that are admittedly, at this point, not unfamiliar: clueless liberals so busy holding space that they don’t get around to filling it with anything.

Matt
Windman

April 20, 2023

On Broadway, it comes off as static, slow, and overextended, and it is hard to determine at first glance whether the fault lies primarily with the play itself or the aggressively over-the-top direction of Rachel Chavkin (“Hadestown”) – or perhaps both.

Juan A.
Ramirez

April 20, 2023

Clueless, well-meaning white people are the butt of the joke, but not the target of any meaningful criticism, in Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play, a clueless but well-meaning satire receiving its Broadway premiere at Second Stage’s Hayes Theatre.

New York Theatre Guide

Amelia
Merrill

April 20, 2023

The damage is real, both on stages across the nation and off, but FastHorse’s exploration of it is for everyone’s benefit, striking the balance between educational and entertaining without hammering home the reminder.

Robert
Hofler

April 20, 2023

Jackson
McHenry

April 20, 2023

The problem is that The Thanksgiving Play intentionally hurtles its characters toward a dead end — like Wile E. Coyote toward a tunnel entrance that’s just drawn on the side of a rock — and it gets stuck once they crash. It takes them down but never justifies why we’re here with them in the first place.

Tim
Teeman

April 20, 2023

This play, written in 2015—and showing its age, given current events—is a skewering of white liberal pieties. The “woke” are a now-familiar figure of mockery of those on the left and right; those people who try to do and say all the right things, and in the gap between words and deeds end up revealing their own prejudices, blind-spots, and inefficacy—an empty politics of gesture and tortuously silly word salads.

Hayley
Levitt

April 20, 2023

It’s a brilliant comedic premise that has aged like a fine wine since its 2018 off-Broadway debut at Playwrights Horizons. Who could have predicted that in just five years we would be living in a world where school board meetings would host theatrical protests against Critical Race Theory, and Ron DeSantis would pick and choose which pieces of Black history to allow into the state of Florida? FastHorse, in turn, uses her play to pose the query, What’s a social justice warrior to do? — and answers with four pitiful versions of, Not much.

Wall Street Journal

Charles
Isherwood

April 20, 2023

The superb cast, and those diverting videos, keep the play humming along. But a feeling of satiation sets in. For all its knife-sharp humor, the play might be compared to a delicious Thanksgiving meal that nevertheless makes you feel a bit overstuffed, and slightly tired of your family, too.