Tribes
Opening Night: March 4, 2012
Closing: January 6, 2013
Theater: Barrow Street Theatre
In Tribes, Billy was born deaf, into a hearing family, and raised inside the fiercely idiosyncratic and unrepentantly politically incorrect cocoon of his parent’s house. He has adapted brilliantly to his family’s unconventional ways, but they’ve never bothered to return the favor. It’s not until he meets Sylvia, a young woman on the brink of deafness, that he finally understands what it means to be understood. Yes, Billy’s family can hear, but will they ever listen?
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March 4, 2012
Have you heard? Are you listening to me? What did you just say? Most of us ask variations on those questions at least a dozen times a day. But it’s unlikely that they vibrate with the resonance they acquire in Nina Raine’s “Tribes,” a smart, lively and beautifully acted new play that asks us to hear how we hear, in silence as well as in speech.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 4, 2012
There’s so much going on in the new off-Broadway show “Tribes” that it’s almost overwhelming: intellect and sentiment, love and cruelty, witty zingers and biting put-downs. But in Nina Raine’s dazzling play, too much is a good thing.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 4, 2012
What a pleasure it is to encounter Nina Raine’s distinctive comedy-drama "Tribes." This story of what happens to a fiercely intellectual, relentlessly competitive, "conventionally unconventional" (as one character puts it) English family when its youngest member, the sweet-natured Billy, who is deaf, steps into his maturity is ruthlessly unsentimental and well observed. Under the doesn’t-miss-a-trick direction of the excellent David Cromer, a superb six-person cast mines every ounce of humor and feeling in this enthralling new work.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 1, 2012
Tribes made me excited about New York theatre again; I haven’t been this knocked out by a play in a long time—maybe not since Our Town opened at Barrow Street Theatre under the direction of David Cromer. Tribes is at the Barrow Street, directed by Cromer. Coincidence? I think not.
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March 5, 2012
The challenges of communication come through loud and clear in British dramatist Nina Raine’s affecting if slghtly overstuffed play Tribes, now receieving a beautifully acted production under the sure-handed direction of David Cromer at the Barrow Street Theatre.
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March 4, 2012
Short reviews seldom permit mention of sound design, but no discussion of Tribes would be complete without a nod to Daniel Kluger’s exquisite aural landscape. The physical elements of David Cromer’s in-the-round production at the Barrow Street Theatre are all top-shelf (starting with Scott Pask’s impeccably specific set), but sound plays an especially important role, because Nina Raine’s domestic drama is centrally concerned with cacophony.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 5, 2012
A family dinner in the beginning of Nina Raine’s "Tribes" tells the audience all it needs to know about the crisis of understanding that plagues the characters in this bright and boldly provocative drama.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 14, 2012
Within families, often the unspoken is louder than any uttered words. Nina Raine’s exquisite play "Tribes" examines the dynamic among members of a highly verbal family who are seemingly deaf to one another.
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