Home
Opening Night: June 5, 2024
Theater: American Airlines
Website: www.roundabouttheatre.org
Home, the landmark new Broadway event, is a powerfully uplifting coming-of-age story written by Samm-Art Williams and directed Kenny Leon. Reeling from the loss of both his North Carolina farm and his childhood sweetheart, Cephus heads to the big city to find something new to give his life meaning.
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June 5, 2024
This is not the kind of play to abandon you in a dark alley, even if Cephus’s distaste for city life is the most compelling and counterintuitive part of the story. Plot machinations that you will see coming at quite some distance deliver a happy ending and may even elicit a few nonconsensual tears.
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June 6, 2024
The show ambitions to resurrect time, mood, character and place over any sort of innovative plot. With that, there are inevitable moments when Williams’ play seems a bit lulling or dated. However, if the mission is to simply revive something that’s been lost — an action we, sadly, can’t do with human beings but can do with art — then “Home” is more than successful.
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June 5, 2024
In bringing the play back, he’s proven that there might be plenty in Williams’s work that’s worth re-exploring, but he hasn’t gotten all the spelunking done himself.
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June 5, 2024
No doubt some will call “Home” sentimental or romantic or overly inclined to see America through a soft gauze. All fair criticisms, I guess. But I see this show as a celebration of the Black farmer, the rural life, the pull of the land, the notion that you should always keep hold of your beginnings. What Cephus gets at the end is not afforded to most of us but as you watch him get it in this production, you sit forward in your seat and think, well, what dramatic character of your acquaintance ever was more deserving?
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June 5, 2024
Home opens tonight on Broadway at Roundabout’s Todd Haimes Theatre in a top-notch production that serves as a fitting and heartfelt tribute to the author.
READ THE REVIEWJune 5, 2024
For a play that largely revolves around Cephus’s mythmaking, Leon’s direction has a “gather round the campfire” quality that slows down its pacing, strangely lacking in intimacy.
READ THE REVIEWJune 5, 2024
Mr. Kittles breathes raucously funny life into his character. He all but glows with recollected pleasure as he recounts anecdotes from his youth… Mr. Kittles is joined by just two actors, Brittany Inge and Stori Ayers, who play multiple roles with delightful aplomb”
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June 5, 2024
Home drags at the start, when the chorus is prone to portentous interchanges, and the section before Cephas goes to prison feels slow (even though much of it is delivered by Kittles at breakneck, auctioneer-style speed); one wishes, too, that Williams explored Cephas’s pivotal decision to defy the draft more clearly.
READ THE REVIEWJune 5, 2024
This sense of alienation is perhaps intentional, mirroring how Cephus feels, but director Kenny Leon’s production still must bargain for the audience’s attention. Cephus’s return to Cross Roads — to his roots, and to the beautiful simplicity of Maldonado’s earlier set — is a balm not just for the character, but for us all.
READ THE REVIEWJune 5, 2024
If the timing of the production is unfortunate in one way, it’s eye-opening in another. Real-world events have turned what I might have dismissed as a dated fable into what feels like a prescient reappraisal. And the three versatile actors on stage, two of whom portray dozens of characters, make the most of Williams’ evocative language, homespun humor, and a plot that comes close to a morality tale about the Evils of Big City Life versus the righteous simplicity of small-town Southern living.
READ THE REVIEWJune 5, 2024
The story is touching, but the ritualistic telling proves problematic. It’s done in large part through narration, often delivered in a poetical, incantational style that can be distancing. Not helping matters is the fact that the two female members of the cast, Stori Ayers and Inge, are tasked with playing dozens of characters which makes the already confusing narrative even harder to follow.
READ THE REVIEWJune 5, 2024
Here, the lyrical opening passages of Home intended to evoke the long ago rural South are nearly lost in the breakneck speed they are spoken. Other poetic sections tend to rush by, too, suggesting that Leon doesn’t trust the audience to appreciate their beauty.
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June 5, 2024
Under Kenny Leon’s direction, all three turn out rare tour-de-force performances that alone make this production worthwhile. Second, Williams is a master of evocative language, and his dialogue often has the feel of spoken-word poetry.
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