Our New Girl

First impressions aren’t everything. Over the course of two intense hours at Atlantic Theater Company’s Stage 2, your flash judgments are likely to make a complete 180 with Nancy Harris’ brilliant new play, Our New Girl. Your blood will boil throughout, first at a simmer and then at a fever pitch. Under the deft direction of Gaye Taylor Upchurch, the four-person ensemble takes the audience into an impossibly frustrating situation and forces us to live there. Feeling this angry rarely feels as enlightening as it does here. The story takes place in the eat-in kitchen of a posh London home. Subtle light penetrates the sheer drapes hanging over the above-the-sink window and gleams off the stainless steel appliances (brilliantly naturalistic lighting by David Weiner). Little bottles of olive oil congregate in strategic colonies all over the room. A giant Rorschach-esque painting hangs on the exposed stone of the upstage wall. With this not-too-subtle touch, scenic designer Timothy R. Mackabee seems to be suggesting that our perceptions of this play will say a lot more about us than it will about the people depicted.