Ben
Brantley

April 19, 2016

Don’t make the mistake of saying that the women in “Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again.” — Alice Birch’s implosive play about the conundrums of being female in the 21st century — are beautiful when they’re angry. Their real-life equivalents would probably (and justifiably) sock you in the jaw, or else combust spontaneously from being subjected to yet another patronizing, cast-iron cliché. Yet the ferocious energy that courses through this short, sharp shock of a production might be characterized as, well, kind of beautiful. Is it O.K. for me to put it that way? I mean, I’m not referring to the physical attributes of any of the four performers (three women, and one very odd-man-out man) who appear in the show that opened on Tuesday night at Soho Rep. Ouch! I just bit my tongue. Ms. Birch’s play, which became a hit for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2014, has a way of making you question everything you say when it comes to discussing women and their relationships with men, one another and a world in a state of unending upheaval. Such linguistic confusion plagues the frantic souls portrayed in this production, which is directed at the pace of a speeding cannon ball by Lileana Blain-Cruz. Even the play’s title, with its use of periods instead of commas, suggests the difficulty of getting words out and how inadequate they seem when you do.