At their best, the monologues use our singular moment to intensify feelings about eternal matters. Great performances are crucial in monologues, especially short ones, because there’s no compensation to be sought in the rest of the cast and because the material is always more or less a sketch. (That said, Viñas’s play, directed by Estefanía Fadul, is beautifully structured and as long as it needs to be.) Like Alan Bennett’s “Talking Heads” and the pandemic series “Viral Monologues,” the “One Room” pieces are especially welcome as opportunities to experience terrific actors, whether newcomers or veterans, displaying new sides of themselves. But it is also, by suggestion, about political engagement, and brings to that subject an allusive grace lacking in some other treatments of the theme.

Source: New York Times August 10, 2020 16:41 UTC