Chicken & Biscuits
Opening Night: October 10, 2021
Closing: January 2, 2022
Theater: Circle in the Square
Rivaling sisters, Baneatta and Beverly, are burying their father—but it’s the non-stop family drama that might be the death of them. Beverly just wants to show the congregation what she’s been “blessed with.” Baneatta’s husband tries to keep the family peace while preparing the eulogy. Baneatta’s youngest son brings his very white, very Jewish boyfriend who is maybe, sort of, okay definitely afraid of Baneatta. Meanwhile, Beverly’s daughter couldn’t mind her own business if it was on a leash. But when a family secret reveals itself at the church altar, things really go crazy…and even Baneatta can’t deny the truth.
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October 10, 2021
Such insight and provocation is otherwise rare in “Chicken & Biscuits.” So is any real tension. Whether the family will accept Logan, whether the sisters will reconcile, whether the mystery guest at the funeral (NaTasha Yvette Williams) will be explained are barely even questions; they’re more like a packing list. In that sense, the play feels dramatically complacent and underdeveloped, suggesting that its trip to Broadway after a pandemic-foreshortened run at the Queens Theater in 2020 might have benefited from a stop along the way.
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October 10, 2021
That party, sadly, never gets started. Just when the comedy should gain momentum, Lyons stops it cold with a lengthy and mostly unfunny memorial service: a succession of sincere tributes to a man we don’t know, culminating in a set-piece eulogy delivered by Lewis (who is otherwise wasted) and a last-minute surprise that comes out of nowhere and tends back there again. Sentimental confessions and reconciliations ensue, but the characters and situations have not been shaped carefully enough to earn them. Advertised as 100 minutes long, Chicken & Biscuits actually lasts two full hours without intermission, and despite some successful laugh lines and several game performances, it drags its weight with palpable effort.
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October 10, 2021
“Chicken & Biscuits” is a feast of a production, and there is enough sustenance and libation for the entire family. Zhailon Levingston, who at 27-years-old becomes the youngest Black director in Broadway history, brings to life Douglas Lyons’ new Broadway play, with a brilliant script that’s fresh, relatable and laugh-out-loud funny.
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October 10, 2021
Chicken & Biscuits will not serve every hunger. In the comic scenes, when the sisters are eyeing each other’s outfits or Logan is bobbling his Bible, the play stands on solid ground, but in the long-seeming resolution scenes, as the drama comes to rely on plot developments, the journey toward uplift turns convenient and then mechanical. Yet just because the script’s jokey sections are its fiercest doesn’t mean Lyons isn’t taking some things seriously. Underneath all the mayhem and rollicking, there’s acknowledgment of real pain.
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October 10, 2021
Douglas Lyons’s “Chicken & Biscuits,” at Broadway’s Circle in the Square theater, is a savory comedy served with a hefty side order of sentiment. It’s a mostly successful combo plate, even if the play’s buoyant humor tends to recede in the later scenes, as the tensions among three generations of an African American family are smoothly settled.
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October 10, 2021
Lyons sticks to George Bernard Shaw’s rule that “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.” In typical sitcom plot development, when things get tough emotionally, out of the bag pops a cultural reference showcasing tropes of the Black experience. Often these references provide a laugh to ease the discomfort before reaching for the breakthrough of hard truths. We are pummeled into laughing submission, unable to question in real time what we are laughing at, and more importantly whom. Because the characters don’t dispute what is said about Black culture, Chicken and Biscuits leaves an aftertaste that will reinforce falsehoods for observers.
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