by Matthew Wexler
“It works if you work it.” But what if you overwork it? Such is the case with Jacob Perkins’ The Dinosaurs, making its world premiere Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons. The liminal play explores the relationships and backstories among six women in recovery during a 12-step meeting.
The clock on the back wall of the room, which looks like a multipurpose cafeteria-gym-theater from your average middle school (scenic design by dots), stays constant. But time shifts surreptitiously in Perkins’ world, with little indication from Yuki Link’s lighting or Palmer Hefferan’s sound design. Instead—mid-sentence—you may think to yourself, we’re not where I thought we were.
Director Les Waters deftly navigates the theatrical conventions, as written in explicit detail in Perkins’ script, with a barrage of slashes, parentheses, white space, brackets, and asterisks. Ultimately, though, the 70-minute performance feels like an exercise rather than a fully realized journey.
When holding space becomes the whole show
From Elizabeth Marvel’s uptight Joan to Kathleen Chalfant’s longtimer Jolly to Keilly McQuail’s guttural Rayna (though “most people” call her Buddy), the tight-knit ensemble moves through the paces of a typical meeting, with the requisite set-up, donation collection, and concluding serenity prayer. At the performance I attended, the audience giggled at some of the performative language, which has become institutionalized in many ways since Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in 1935.
The action unfolds methodically, prompting the audience to hold space with the onstage action, or lack thereof. Introspective moments emerge during “shares,” in which attendees have allotted time to reflect on the meeting’s topic, in this case, “Coming Back.”
Which makes the play’s title feel unresolved. (The actors are still figuring it out.) Extinct for over 66 million years, due in large part to an asteroid impact, some might say their fossilized remains are part of Earth’s enduring legacy. But the women of Perkins’ play are achingly real, as Jolly alludes to when describing her observation of an unhoused woman she’d seen on a stoop across from her apartment building for decades, who vanished, then reappeared:
“Her presence allowed me to locate myself inside my own life, just knowing she was there… My monument, covered in dust.”
3 out of 5 stars
Fast facts: ‘The Dinosaurs’
The Dinosaurs asks you to sit with discomfort in a 12-step meeting that shifts through time—admirably ambitious, but it never quite justifies its own metaphor.
- Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, New York City
- Notable performers: Kathleen Chalfant, Elizabeth Marvel
- Running time: 70 minutes
- Performances through March 1, 2026
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