In a Tony season dominated by revivals, adaptations and London/Chicago/off-Broadway transfers, David Lindsay-Abaire’s The Balusters stands apart from the pack as the one original play written expressly for Broadway. Directed by Kenny Leon and featuring an all-star cast that includes Tony winner Anika Noni Rose, and Emmy winners Richard Thomas and Carl Clemons, the comedy depicts a previously cordial neighborhood association board that descends into chaos when a new member proposes a new addition to the community — a stop sign.
Lindsay-Abaire is one of Broadway’s most respected and lauded playwrights, scoring the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for his wrenching drama, Rabbit Hole, and two Tony statuettes for the 2021 musical, Kimberly Akimbo. And critics are generally keen on this latest offering, with some reservations. Here’s a sampling of the reviews.
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The good
Deeming The Balusters a “Critic’s Pick,” Variety‘s Brent Lang raves: “[It] may be the most vital and timely show on Broadway this season. It’s definitely the funniest. …The Balusters doesn’t offer a hopeful portrait of community government — it can be hard to see the virtue of having heated debates over dog poop disposal etiquette when the world is on fire. But you leave the play reminded of the importance of staying engaged. Today’s battle may be over erecting a stop sign. Tomorrow’s fight could have far greater stakes. Love your neighbors or loathe them, you still have to find a way to live with them.”
The New York Times‘ Helen Shaw also gives the play “Critic’s Pick” designation, writing: “Lindsay-Abaire sets his characters up like bowling pins, but he only knocks them down with care. …I may have my quibbles with the way the plot unfolds here. …but all boulevard comedies lean on coincidence, and I guess that applies even when the boulevard is a residential esplanade. (I laughed while I watched The Balusters; I only grumbled while thinking about it for hours later.)”
And over in Culture Sauce, Thom Geier opines: “It is fun to watch these characters, so quick to congratulate themselves on their goodness, come to terms with the ways in which they fall short of their noble ideals. Director Kenny Leon keeps a tight pace on the proceedings, though his staging can lack an imaginative flair or dynamism. The cast is mostly rooted to the sofa and chairs in a broad half oval around Kyra’s stylish living room carpet, as if they were repeatedly assembling for a group portrait, and even the climax occurs mostly upstage with an almost muted decorum.”
Anika Noni Rose in ‘The Balusters’ (Courtesy Jeremy Daniel)
The meh
Entertainment Weekly‘s Mekishana Pierre thinks that the The Balusters feels more like a sitcom than a Broadway show. “By the time The Balusters reaches its conclusion, the play has forced its characters and audience to explore the intricacies of racism, discrimination, privilege, and those annoying biases that we all contain, and asked the question of how we determine a bad person is a bad person,” she writes. “It’s uncomfortable, hokey (in a respectable way, most of the time), and keen, although it could do with a bit of sharpening in some elements.”
In Deadline, Greg Evans also finds the play lacking. “That characters in The Balusters, despite an unassailable cast led by Richard Thomas, Anika Noni Rose, Margaret Colin and the delightful Marylouise Burke, never reach that level of pinpoint precision, its characters as often as not seeming little more than voices for their demographics, as uni-dimensional as the poster board demonstrating exactly where that stop sign should go regardless of which hypocrite stands to benefit.”
And The Guardian‘s Jesse Hassenger also finds the play to land on the “schematic” side. “Rather than allowing the audience to consider and challenge different points of view, [Lindsay-Abaire is] giving them the chance to feel righteously correct from several different angles,” he notes. “Even more egregious, several emotional turns depend on offstage action that, through its on-stage unveiling, feel like cheap gotchas. Is this a multifaceted discussion or a series of cute writers’ tricks? The Balusters feels more like the latter — which makes it both more fun and less resonant than it probably should be.”
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