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<\/p>\nTheater review by Adam Feldman\u00a0<\/p>\n
The talk in Clare Barron\u2019s icky, tender, gorgeous You Got Older is sometimes so small it nearly vanishes completely. Alia Shawkat plays Mae, a youngish lawyer whose life is in ruins\u2014she has lost her job, her apartment and her boyfriend in one fell swoop\u2014and who has moved back to rural Washington to spend time with her father (Peter Friedman). Between awkward pauses in the play\u2019s opening scene, they discuss gardening, toothbrushes, sleeping arrangements; what they don\u2019t discuss is his recent cancer diagnosis. You Got Older is less about disease than about the unease that surrounds it, and it beautifully captures elusive things about avoidance: It\u2019s about the denial of death, but also the denial of living.<\/p>\n
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You Got Older | Photograph: Courtesy Marc J. Franklin<\/p>\n
You Got Older mostly unfolds as well-observed comedy that often ventures into morbid territory. When Mae and her siblings\u2014blunt older sister Hannah (a hilarious Nadine Malouf), amorphous middle brother Matthew (Misha Brooks) and excitable youngest sister Jenny (Nina White)\u2014gather around their dad\u2019s hospital bed, they spend their visit bickering, teasing and commiserating about the off-putting family odor they share: \u201cMold. Mildew. Musty. BO. And egg.\u201d A similar sense of bodily dysfunction informs the flirtation between Mae and Mac (Caleb Joshua Eberhardt), a former schoolmate she encounters at a local bar; she shares details of her painful rash, and he reveals that he is into that sort of thing. (\u201cI like scabs. And ingrown hairs. And flaky skin.\u201d) Sex and death are hard to separate for Mae; she dreams of being \u201cobliterated\u201d by the object of her horny nighttime fantasies, a square-jawed Cowboy (Paul Cooper) who is like a cross between a Mountie and the Marlboro Man, and even he is not as strong as he seems.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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You Got Older | Photograph: Courtesy Marc J. Franklin<\/p>\n
The original Off Broadway production of Barron\u2019s extraordinary play was one of my favorite shows of 2014, and this revival at A24\u2019s Cherry Lane Theatre\u2014impeccably directed, once again, by Anne Kauffman<\/a>\u2014is as funny and discomfiting as the original. I\u2019ve gotten older, but the play hasn\u2019t aged a day, and the new cast is terrific. (So are Arnulfo Maldonado\u2019s scenic design, Isabella Byrd\u2019s lighting and Daniel Kluger\u2019s sound and music.) As her very name suggests\u2014and as did the names of Shawkat\u2019s characters Maeby in Arrested Development and Dory in Search Party\u2014Mae is uncertain and lost, and Shawkat is a master explorer of confused interior landscapes. Her quizzical depression plays beautifully against Friedman\u2019s understated understanding, and his desire to impart to her some kind of wisdom about living as he faces what may be the end; moments of real connection poke through the characters\u2019 guilt and distraction. (\u201cI\u2019m always itching to go do something else even when I\u2019m in the middle of having a nice moment,\u201d Mae\u2019s father admits.) Barron presses on tender bruises\u2014loss, comfort, fear, concern\u2014in ways that often leave you laughing with a strange pleasure of recognition. But if you find yourself in tears by the end, the play can handle that, too. It holds you in a bracing embrace, as close as it needs to\u2014which is to say, too close.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n You Got Older.\u00a0Cherry Lane Theatre\u00a0(Off Broadway<\/a>). By Clare Barron. Directed by Anne Kauffman. With Alia Shawkat, Peter Friedman, Caleb Joshua Eberhardt, Nadine Malouf, Nina White, Misha Brooks, Paul Cooper. Running time: 1hr 45mins. No intermission.\u00a0<\/p>\n Follow Adam Feldman on X: @FeldmanAdam You Got Older | Photograph: Courtesy Marc J. Franklin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Theater review by Adam Feldman\u00a0 The talk in Clare Barron\u2019s icky, tender, gorgeous You Got Older is sometimes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143426,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[47764,7746,7743,2526,9,11,10,7744,905,48663],"class_list":{"0":"post-143425","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-event-type-off-broadway","9":"tag-event-type-plays-shows","10":"tag-featured-theater-featured","11":"tag-good-for-good-for-locals","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-news","15":"tag-price","16":"tag-theater","17":"tag-theater-comedy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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