Ohio State Murders
Opening Night: December 8, 2022
Theater: James Earl Jones Theatre
Website: ohiostatemurdersbroadway.com
Six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald leads the cast of the riveting and surprising Ohio State Murders. Directed by Tony Award winner Kenny Leon, McDonald plays a famous writer who returns to her alma mater to finally reveal the truth of what happened when she was a student there.
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December 8, 2022
The production is led by six-time Tony-Award winner, Audra McDonald under the helm of Tony Award-winning director Kenny Leon, with a phenomenal set by Tony Award-winning designer Beowulf Boritt, resplendent costumes from Tony-nominated and Drama Desk Award-winning designer Dede Ayite, and phenomenal lights from Tony-nominated designer Allen Lee Hughes. As you can imagine, the entire affair looks as if it cost $50 million. If only they were working with a better play.
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December 8, 2022
Rather, in Kenny Leon’s piercing production, starring Audra McDonald in another performance ripped from her gallery of harrowing women, it is painful both in the story it tells and in the immense effort expended to tell it properly.
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December 8, 2022
And even though Kenny Leon’s plain direction threatens to flatten the rocky beauty of “Ohio,” this production ultimately reaffirms Kennedy’s singular mastery of common language, dissolution of traditional form and rightful place on Broadway.
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December 8, 2022
It may be easy to take for granted that Audra McDonald, with six Tony Awards to her name, is capable of performances that creep delicately into your psyche and rattle around there as if clearing bats from its darkest recesses. A meticulous cartographer of the heart and mind, she charts human interiors that feel previously unknown, or, in the case of “Ohio State Murders,” which opened on Broadway Thursday night, unimaginable before she brings them to life.
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December 8, 2022
Unfortunately, like nervous parents giving their kids a bit more attention than they might need, Ohio State Murders in a production that’s sometimes just much for its own good, portentous when it needn’t be, with a here-and-there vibe of being overcooked when pared-down simplicity might be called for.
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December 8, 2022
In director Kenny Leon’s thoughtful production, Beowulf Boritt’s set suggests a storm of research-library shelves, some suspended in midair and some half-buried in the ground, as though Suzanne existed in both the midst of catastrophe and the ruins of one.
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December 8, 2022
Rather, the considerate revival from director Kenny Leon explores the racist climate of a Midwestern university during the 1950s, and the monsters that such prejudices can unleash even at a supposed place of higher learning.
December 8, 2022
Kennedy’s plays don’t condense easily into an elevator pitch, and this partly explains why it has taken nearly six decades for her to arrive on commercial Broadway — but it’s better late than never. Director Kenny Leon’s darkly mesmerizing production shows exactly what you can do with a Kennedy script and a first-class budget.
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December 8, 2022
It’s as if McDonald is rewriting every line a few times before she actually says it out loud. “Ohio State Murders” features four other actors, but as powerfully staged here by Leon, it is a one-person show starring McDonald.
READ THE REVIEWDecember 8, 2022
McDonald is so transformative that in her few moments of bygone joy, such as when she convincingly plays with a pink scarf as though it were a real child, we momentarily forget Suzanne’s anger. But when it brings her to her knees as she finally, for one piercing moment, lets all her pain boil over, we’re reminded anew that the most violent force in Ohio State Murders is racism itself.
READ THE REVIEWDecember 8, 2022
McDonald’s performance is, to say the least, immersive as she probes what is, at its core, a memory monologue, not unlike Adam Rapp’s “The Sound Inside,” which was recently on Broadway. Her lending her celebrity to the role is both presented here as an act of generosity to a playwright long overlooked by Broadway, and entirely viable as such.
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December 8, 2022
We hear the pained grit in her voice, as she digs through layers of tragedy and injustice. McDonald animates Suzanne’s voice with flickers of upset, fury, the scars and knowledge of harsh injustice, grief, cruelty, and prejudice. Yet her determination to speak is the battering ram through all she has endured. Our audience sat watching McDonald, a six-time Tony Award winner, in engrossed, outraged, moved silence.
READ THE REVIEWDecember 8, 2022
Ms. McDonald, a regal presence, brings her superb musicality to the crisp clarity of Ms. Kennedy’s language, the richness and subtle variations in her voice casting a spell that so perfectly captures the rhythms and colors of the writing that we are captivated by its eerie, unadorned beauty.
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