Margin Notes: You & Me

You & Me

Courtnie Keaton as Mac and Brianne
Buishas as Chloe. Photo by Filip Rucewicz.

Seen on: Wednesday, 4/29/26.

Plot Summary

A year after college student Delilah opened fire on campus, killing eleven people before killing herself, friends of both the murderer and the deceased gather for a memorial at their local diner. Attendees include Delilah's twin sister Chloe, her ex-girlfriend Mac, and a movie star in town to research an upcoming role. Over the course of one day, Chloe continues her pursuit to uncover why her sister did what she did, and friends and enemies alike reveal damning truths along the way.

Thoughts:

I'll be honest, I wish I didn't have a visceral sense memory of watching the news about a mass shooting in my hometown, frantically calling my mom and friends to see if they were alive. I wish I didn't have a more recent memory of the same trauma with coworkers at my office last year. Horribly, I'm sure I'm not the only audience member reliving a memory like that while watching the characters onstage live through it, too. What's awful about an incident like this is not just that your world changes completely, irrevocably -- the solid ground you thought you knew now an unsteady raft in a churning ocean -- but how the world keeps going anyway. Life keeps going. You keep going. You may be frozen inside, but you're still breathing and eating and your eyes blink and your feet move you from place to place. Playwright and director Anthony M. Laura's work wrestles with that internal division: Chloe is unable to move on from the moment her sister destroyed the world, thinking if she can only pause that moment, or even rewind, she could find a way to, if not undo, at least understand what happened. But she's surrounded by people attempting to move forward with their lives, to find new paths and meaning beyond the worst thing that ever happened to them. Mac is leaving town, Leighton wants to go into politics, Paris is selling her family diner, Ellie is going to RADA, and Aurora has already left town and gotten engaged. And Theo, the man who gave Delilah the guns, is nowhere to be found. They're not all in the acceptance stage of their grief by any means, but Chloe is the only one perpetually lost in the bargaining stage.

Weekly Margin 2026, W17: What Happened Was ..., Every Brilliant Thing, Becky Shaw, The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington

4/21/26: What Happened Was ...

What: Audible's Minetta Lane Theatre presents a revival of Tom Noonan's two-hander about an awkward first date between two coworkers who both feel a bit at sea in a life that hasn't turned out how they thought it would.

And? Great performances from both Corey Stoll and Cecily Strong, particularly Strong's reading of her character's grim and explicit "children's story." I appreciate that the play doesn't attempt to land on a sweet button that has not been earned by the preceding moments. Instead, it chooses to highlight the persisting loneliness of both characters, whether or not they will ultimately be able to cross their divide to find companionship in each other.

Corey Stoll as Michael and Cecily Strong as Jackie.
Photo by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade.

4/22/26: Every Brilliant Thing

What: Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe's one-person interactive show, currently starring Daniel Radcliffe (but soon to be starring Mariska Hargitay), about a young man's attempt to reckon with his mother's recurring uncompleted suicides and his own depression, by making a list of "every brilliant thing" that makes life better. A number of audience members are drafted, to either read out individually numbered brilliant things (number one is ice cream), or to play characters in the young man's life, including father, spouse, and a nice couple in a hospital who give him a juice box (which he promptly returns because he doesn't like it).

And? Radcliffe is everything charming, a ball of energy whose battery never seems to peter out, even when getting into the heavier parts of the story. But in all honesty, even with its purportedly heavy topic, the play itself never feels that heavy. The concept/conceit of the show is exciting, but suffers in execution (it's often hard to hear the brilliant things being called out by audience members, and the audience-character-stand ins are, of course, inconsistent). And the whole thing just lacks a certain heft for it to really follow me home. I'm not saying I needed the gut punch of Macmillan's other work, People, Places and Things, but PPT knew how to land satisfyingly. EBT has a lighter heart than PPT, but it should still be able to land satisfyingly. It was a fine time, but not a great time.

Daniel Radcliffe. Photo by Matthew Murphy.

Weekly Margin 2026, W16: The Receptionist

4/16/26: The Receptionist

What: 2nd Stage presents Adam Bock's play about a gossiping receptionist in a suburban three-person office -- the northeast branch of an unnamed company. The seemingly innocuous office comedy takes a dark turn when Mr. Raymond, the senior employee who's been running inexplicably late, finally arrives to report on his client meeting from the day before.

And? I'm being deliberately coy because this show is still so early in previews and it's so much better to go in cold on this one. The play lands itself in a much more disturbing place than it started, and Bock achieves that journey deftly, imperceptibly, the red flags masquerading themselves until we examine them retroactively. The play becomes an exploration of the pretty sheen that can mask brutal fascism, as well as the dangers of complicity: the devil will always come for his due. All four cast members are great, led by the inimitable Katie Finneran, who can mine any line for humor or pathos in a way that no one else can.

Weekly Margin 2026, W15: Echoes of My Silence, Scorched Earth

4/09/26: Echoes of My Silence

What: As part of the Frigid/New York City Fringe Festival, Azadeh Kangarini's autobiographical one-woman show plays at the Chain Theatre. Her piece follows the path of her silence in the face of externalized and internalized misogyny through the various men whose molestations through the years of her life have made her question herself and her own relationship with her body.

And? full review here.

Azadeh Kangarani. Photo by Nathan Zhe.

4/11/26: Scorched Earth

What: St. Ann's Warehouse presents Attic Projects' production of Luke Murphy's choreographic play about a cold case over a death ruled accidental at the center of a land dispute in Ireland.

And? Absolutely stunning choreography: fluid and athletic and almost weightless, bodies seeming to be falling up from the ground, a collapse in reverse. The dance often separates itself from literal storytelling, dilating emotional moments and crises, fixations and mysteries. So while the ostensible frame is the 24 hours a man is held for questioning as a cold case is reopened in which he is the prime suspect for a murder, there are diversions to the late night walker who found the body, the damage to the body itself, the missing donkey, and the farmer's affection for the land he's losing that volleys between love and desire: a distinction noted in the work of giving versus taking. The final sequence, as the walls fall away to reveal the tract of land, a steep hill with a deep loam, is a gorgeous expansion of space and bodies in motion.

The company of Scorched Earth. Photo by Teddy Wolff.

Margin Notes: Echoes of My Silence

Echoes of My Silence

Seen on: Thursday, 4/09/26.

Azadeh Kangarani. Photo by Nathan Zhe.

Plot and Background

As part of the Frigid/New York City Fringe Festival, Azadeh Kangarini's autobiographical one-woman show plays at the Chain Theatre. Her piece follows the path of her silence in the face of externalized and internalized misogyny through the various men whose molestations through the years of her life have made her question herself and her own relationship with her body.

Thoughts:

Azadeh Kangarani stands onstage in slacks and a burnt orange blouse. She is calm, warm, collected. A woman who knows who she is and loves who she is. Behind her are six vertical mirrors: some single pieces, some a column of smaller mirrors. She lifts the seventh mirror, a horizontal one leaning at her side, and walks through the audience, asking us "How often do you look at your face?" As she tells her story, a mix of memories from the most recent--an encounter with a female pilot whose sight forces Kangarani to reckon with her own internal biases--to the most distant--a memory of a man exposing himself to her when she was only nine years old. For each story she tells, she wrestles with her guilt over how many times she held her tongue as men took advantage of her. Why was she silent each time? Why didn't she let the world know about yet another violation? Silence after silence, echoing through her life. For each memory, one of the vertical mirrors behind her is assigned an identity and an initial for his name. Though each represents a man who tried to steal her autonomy, who pressured her to quash her own sense of her worth and voice, they are all still each a mirror. She has named them, but if she turns to look at them dead on, she will see only herself. Even this, the performance of her wrestling with her self-imposed guilt, has her seeing her own face as the perpetrator of her trauma. She's not being fair to herself. But it's an honest examination of how survivors of this sort of assault do not know how to be fair to themselves. Her piece brings her face to face with her own shames, but also her survival of each of them. And she invites the audience to do the same: face that in ourselves which we are most afraid to see, and discover that in ourselves that we most love to see. The silence doesn't have to echo on, once we are able to speak.