If you’ve sat around a holiday table and wondered if you were really related to the people sitting across from you, The Visitors will strike a chord. Second Stage Theater presents the world premiere of Bryna Turner’s play, which follows a turbulent week in the lives of four siblings who convene in a pipe-clattering New York City apartment to face what few of us are ready for: mortality.
Joanna (Mary Wiseman) and Naomi (Esco Jouléy) have invited Joanna’s three older siblings to their home for a time-sensitive meeting. This includes eldest Theresa (Celia Keenan-Bolger), who’s all too happy for a respite from her teen back home, Henry (Will Pullen), the short-fused middle sibling who’s brought his infant in tow, and Rory (Danny Wolohan), the estranged, newly sober(ish) black sheep of the family. What could go wrong?
A routine test with a not-so-routine result
Scenic designer Kate Noll creates a packed, loft-style apartment to fill the wide stage at the Pershing Square Signature Center, informed by Naomi’s job as a props designer. Joanna and Naomi want to start a family, but an unforeseen critical health issue emerges as the lesbian couple begins routine fertility testing. Joanna is in kidney failure.
A sibling is Joanna’s best chance for a successful organ transplant. They’re all tested for compatibility, and it turns out that each is ineligible—or so they say. And then the gloves come off.
Turner’s script is sharp enough, in a dramedy kind of way, with plenty of one-liners (“What is family but coercion?”) that will ring true for many. But director Jenna Worsham puts the actors through their paces with overly fussy scene changes, opening and closing a fold-out sofa, moving coffee tables, and other unnecessary business to move things along.
Wolohan’s Rory, the misfit with a heart of gold and a few too many dead brain cells, could anchor a sitcom spin-off. Playwright Turner has other plans, culminating in Joanna pulling a knife on her siblings to find out who may have lied and why.
The Visitors arrives in a fall season crowded with family reckonings, from Lauren Ambrose in The Unbelievers to the all-star Broadway revival of Other Desert Cities. Wedged between its louder siblings, it can’t quite shake its middle-child complex.
It wants better content.
Is ‘The Visitors’ worth seeing?
Bryna Turner’s sibling dramedy has enough bite to keep the family squabbling entertaining, but fussy staging and a familiar formula mean these visitors don’t linger long after they leave.
- Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 W 42nd Street, New York City
- Notable performers: Esco Jouléy, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Will Pullen, Mary Wiseman and Danny Wolohan
- Running time: 95 minutes, no intermission
- Performances through December 6
Have another minute?
