Did Off-Broadway Critics Praise Pen at Playwrights Horizons?

Playwrights Horizons has a hit on its Mainstage with Grey Gardens and now the company has opened a production at its smaller space, the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre. David Marshall Grant's family drama Pen, headlined by J. Smith-Cameron and Reed Birney, had its official bow at the venue on April 2. Did critics think it was worth writing about?

Here is a sampling of what they had to say:

William Stevenson in his Broadway.com Review: "Despite a strong cast headed by off-Broadway vets J. Smith-Cameron and Reed Birney, Grant's latest is a slow-going downer of a domestic drama… Grant aims to comment on suffocating parent-child relationships, giving up control and making sacrifices for a loved one. Unfortunately, he doesn't make his points in a dramatically compelling manner. The dialogue is flat, even when tempers flare and voices get raised."

Andrea Stevens of The New York Times: "Helen is so tough, her ex-husband, Jerry, reminisces, that he ended up nicknaming her Hell. And at first, in David Marshall Grant's earnest new play, Pen, that sounds right. Especially with the wizardly J. Smith-Cameron portraying the character as if she were a repeating rifle, the one-liners shooting forth nonstop—some funny, others leaving a bloody track on their target. But soon it is obvious that Helen is not so much a cruel adult as an angry, cheated teenager… Pen, which opened last night at Playwrights Horizons, directed by Will Frears, has a lot to say, too much at times. But it is eloquent about its three characters' relationship to the past."

Marilyn Stasio of Variety: "Is there anything original left to be said about the eternal battle between a controlling mother and a passive-aggressive father for the heart and soul of a rebellious child? Possibly not. But that doesn't stop David Marshall Grant from trying to goose that perennial domestic conflict by serving it up with heavy doses of Freudian symbolism—including the suggestive Pen of the title. It's ironic, then, that these weighted metaphors contribute less to the play's appeal than the quick-witted one-liners that Grant pitches with effortless skill to his cliched, but wryly observed characters. Never mind fathers and mothers—the real tension in both Grant's play and in Will Frears' direction is between comedy and melodrama."

Michael Kuchwara of The Associated Press: "If you're willing to wallow in a bit of disbelief, Pen, David Marshall Grant's play about a fractious family that fell apart, makes for an intriguing if frustrating evening of theater... Despite Grant's sprightly if argumentative dialogue, it's hard to generate much affection for any of these people. The mother is permanently cranky, a quarrelsome woman who seems to enjoy expounding on the negative and fiercely keeping track of her life and possessions." Linda Winer of Newsday: "Pen, which opened last night at Playwrights Horizons, feels more like a promise than a payoff. This is a small, thoughtful, mildly provocative 'what if?' domestic fantasy - a trip down the shallow end of the rabbit hole, where divorced parents might get a second chance and a teenage son gets to walk part of a mile in his mother's shoes. Grant still has a snappy way with intimate conversation and writes characters we believe he believes. But this one has too close a relation to one of those hairpin emotional turns from naturalism to magic… We cannot escape the sense that Pen might haunt a short story with greater phantasmagorical power than Will Frears' competent production gets us to imagine onstage."