Theater: 59E59 Theaters / 59 East 59th St., New York, NY, 10022
Synopsis:
As Boo writes about her dad, Larry, and the hurricane that almost drowned their Mississippi hometown, the story becomes about an entirely different storm.
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June 24, 2011: With “The Play About My Dad,” Boo Killebrew attempts a daunting juggling act: telling multiple accounts of Hurricane Katrina’s assault on her hometown, Gulfport, Miss., and recounting the dissolution of her parents’ marriage and her rapprochement with her father, a doctor called to action when the storm hits. She largely pulls it off, though detours intermittently threaten the balance.
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June 22, 2011: At the start of "The Play About My Dad," Boo Killebrew, a fairly intense but likable young playwright, describes the play that is about to be performed. She says, "We are going to play with magical realism and time travel and side stories and make the whole thing sort of like a tapestry." And the play's actual author—who also happens to be named Boo Killebrew—succeeds nicely in using these elements to weave an involving and seemingly personal dramatic tapestry of Hurricane Katrina and how it led to a reconciliation between Boo (played by Anna Greenfield) and her estranged father, Larry Killebrew (Jay Potter), an emergency-room doctor in Gulfport, Miss.
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June 24, 2011: “You know what we can thank storms for?” asks the elderly Essie Watson (Geany Masai) of a courteous man who has come to board up her windows against the oncoming wind and rain. “Really great stories.” And that is what the up-and-coming CollaborationTown company delivers, too, in Boo Killebrew’s moving and imaginatively generous The Play About My Dad. The man in Essie’s house is Larry Killebrew (Jay Potter, wonderfully natural), the playwright’s father and, in 2005, a doctor in Gulfport, Mississippi; the tempest in question was Hurricane Katrina, which took many lives there; and the play is a memory piece in which an actor, Anna Greenfield, embodies the playwright herself, testing out the script as it goes along. Memory, storytelling, playwriting and time travel intersect with a lovely kind of epic intimacy.
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June 21, 2011: Beautiful writing, striking direction, and a slew of excellent performances await you at The Play About My Dad, the final entry in this year's Americas Off Broadway Festival at 59E59. This new play by Boo Killebrew blends several profoundly moving stories about the catastrophe that was Hurricane Katrina with some meta-theatrical musings about family, perspective, and storytelling. There is much to take away from this ambitious work.
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June 27, 2011: This is a charming and clever piece of theatre. It does not reach the heights it aims for, but it comes pretty damn close.
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