The Submission
Opening Night: September 27, 2011
Closing: October 22, 2011
Theater: Lucille Lortel Theatre
Shaleeha G’ntamobi’s stirring new play about an alcoholic black mother and her card shark son trying to get out of the projects has just been accepted into the nation’s preeminent theater festival. Trouble is, Shaleeha G’ntamobi doesn’t exist, except in the imagination of wannabe-playwright Danny Larsen, who created her as a kind of affirmative-action nom-de-plume. But a nom-de-guerre may prove more useful as the lies pile up, shaky alliances are forged, and everyone dear to Danny must decide whether or not to run for cover as the whole thing threatens to blow up in his lily white face.
BUY TICKETSREAD THE REVIEWS:
September 27, 2011
Early in “The Submission,” Jeff Talbott’s perky tale of racial pride and prejudice in the theater, a fledgling playwright praises a friend’s recently completed script. “It’s so … producible,” he says in wonder. “Four characters? One set? I mean, it could be done, you know?”
READ THE REVIEWSeptember 28, 2011
It takes more than a juicy setup and tangy talking points to make a great play. Obviously. But it’s easy to be reminded of that during "The Submission," a dramedy about a struggling New York writer who goes to extremes to get his play produced.
READ THE REVIEW
September 27, 2011
What could be funnier? A white, middle-class playwright named Danny Larson (the professionally disarming Jonathan Groff) knows that no one’s going to read a play about the black experience written by "a white, white dude." So he submits his play, "Call a Spade," to the Humana Festival under the made-up name of "Shaleeha G’ntamobi."
READ THE REVIEW
September 28, 2011
Racial stereotypes and bigotry are boldly addressed — to both uncomfortable and comedic effect — in Jeff Talbott’s The Submission, being given its world premiere by MCC Theater at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. It’s a daring piece of writing that doesn’t always succeed, but the production, directed with hard-hitting flair by Walter Bobbie and featuring exceptional performances from Jonathan Groff and Rutina Wesley, nevertheless proves to be a riveting affair.
READ THE REVIEW
September 27, 2011
Jeff Talbott is a longtime actor, first-time playwright, and in his debut work, The Submission, he displays an actor’s homing instinct for the Moment of Heat and the eminently deliverable line. He also has a quartet of lusty young talents: Spring Awakening’s Jonathan Groff, True Blood’s Rutina Wesley, Eddie Kaye Thomas of American Pie fame (hugely fun onstage, and not onstage nearly enough, here or elsewhere), and Off Broadway’s newest hipster institution, that tall drink of silken tofu Will Rogers. They deliver Talbott’s punchy, pseudo-Millennial dudespeak with gusto and edge. Every word comes pre-weaponized, and director Walter Bobbie’s scene work sings. It’s all highly watchable, even when it’s vaguely ludicrous — which is, I’m sorry to say, most of the time. Because all Talbott’s missing, really, is a play.
READ THE REVIEWSeptember 27, 2011
If you have any doubt about the magnitude of the loss we suffered when playwright Lanford Wilson died this past March, Keen Company’s heart-stopping production of his 1970 play "Lemon Sky" makes it all too abundantly clear. This unsparing yet deeply humane autobiographical drama about the wounds that families inflict in the name of love is luminous under Jonathan Silverstein’s quietly piercing direction.
READ THE REVIEW