If your ex wanted to meet up again, would you? Previously engaged, Jada and Dallas reunite for dinner to hash out the good, the bad, and the ugly from their romantic past. Despite the intrusion of sassy waiters, complicated memories, and their best efforts to keep things casual, the estranged couple find themselves cornered by the truth. From the author and director of Chicken & Biscuits (Douglas Lyons & Zhailon Levingston), this world premiere play is a hilarious and sweet open letter to love found, lost, and possibly reignited.
This new romantic comedy stars three-time Tony Award nominee Kara Young (MCC’s All the Natalie Portmans, Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch, Clyde’s, The Cost of Living), Biko Eisen-Martin (MCC’s soft) and Michael Rishawn (Ain’t No Mo’).
That’s why it’s refreshing to see a show like Table 17, which not only includes a program note of encouragement from playwright Douglas Lyons but actually succeeds in creating the welcome physically and theatrically. “Laugh openly …” Lyons writes. “When the characters ask you for advice, don’t be shy, talk to ’em.” On the page, that’s cute — but affecting that dynamic in a space takes a sharp, willing director and actors bold and charming enough to help audiences get psyched, and then flexible enough to take the curveballs when they come. Good thing Lyons has Zhailon Levingston (of Cats: The Jellicle Ball) calling the shots and the rock-solid trio of Biko Eisen-Martin, Michael Rishawn, and the unnervingly excellent Kara Young playing the game. Young — who just took home her first Tony on her third nomination for Purlie Victorious — is so magnetic, so expressive and instinctively comedic, and then so present and moving, that most bodies three times her size don’t contain a fraction of her firepower. (She’s five-foot-two and doesn’t reach Eisen-Martin’s shoulder while wearing four-inch heels, and I would trust her to lift a car.) Meanwhile, Eisen-Martin has plenty of his own charisma, but he’s also able to receive and convert her high-wattage energy with the grace of a good straight man — figuratively and also not: “Ugh, the straights,” sighs one of Rishawn’s characters, a mean-gay maître-d’ named River, with the kind of eye roll that could only be the result of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour rule.
These three actors have so much individual talent and group chemistry that it would have been an entertaining 90 minutes if they had been reading the phone book. But with Table 17, the honesty and the wittiness of the writing hook you immediately if the actors’ dynamism hadn't already. The excellent costume design (Devario D. Simmons) allows the characters to transition seamlessly between the present day to flashbacks in a club, on a plane, or at a Knicks game. Director Zhailon Livingston’s vision ensures the characters always feel three-dimensional, sometimes literally as they dance among the audience members seated at the other “tables.” The meet-cute, the proposal, the escalating fights - there’s something magical about getting lost in the formulaic.
2024 | Off-Broadway |
MCC Theatre Off-Broadway Premiere Production Off-Broadway |
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