The Layover OFF-BROADWAY REVIEWS

• NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW OF The Layover

  

  In 'The Layover', Strangers on a Plane and Missed Connections

  Charles Isherwood

  August 25, 2016: Has anyone ever enjoyed a layover? Either it is nerve-janglingly short or grindingly long. “The Layover,” a disappointing new play by Leslye Headland that opened on Thursday at Second Stage Theater, achieves the novel feat of being both at the same time. Running a little more than 90 minutes, it doesn’t succeed in bringing us deeply into the lives of its principal characters. And yet we don’t exactly leave pining for more of their company. Ms. Headland, whose comedy “Bachelorette” remains among the most scorchingly funny new plays I’ve reviewed, has muffled her comic verve almost completely in this play, although the dialogue occasionally crackles with sharp-elbowed exchanges. Instead she has written a dark drama about infidelity and its unforeseen consequences.

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• TIME OUT NEW YORK REVIEW OF The Layover

  

  The Layover at Second Stage Theatre mixes sex and lies

  David Cote

  August 25, 2016: Calling dialogue “slick” can seem like backhanded praise, code for facile gimmickry. But I use it for playwright Leslye Headland (Bachelorette) with genuine admiration and literalist precision: Her rapid-fire banter greases the skids for morally rudderless characters to crash into one another; it lubricates their descent into comic chaos. The scowling ghost of Patricia Highsmith (Strangers on a Train) hovers over Headland’s neo-noir about obsession and guilt. It begins as innocent flirtation between Shellie (Annie Parisse) and Dex (Adam Rothenberg) as they wait for their plane to take off from Chicago’s O’Hare. She teaches American crime fiction; he’s an engineer. The flight is canceled, and one thing leads to another in the hotel—despite poorly timed phone calls from Dex’s high-maintenance fiancée (Amelia Workman).

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