The Off-Broadway Theatre Review: Natalie Margolin’s All Nighter
By Ross
“Do better,” one of the young women states, emphatically to another, as they gather around a hypnotically oblong table for their last full-on All Nighter in the last week of their last year in college. These four college seniors, who also share a living space, unpack and jam themselves in together in friendship and companionship, even though they can’t help but repeatedly acknowledge in frustration that they aren’t sitting at ‘their’ proper table. Those “productive” ones, led by the unseen Jenny Perkins, have taken possession of it across this study hall space, but they won’t stay the whole night, like these four plan on doing.
Yet they still find themselves there, gathered together as a solid friend pack, reminiscing, connecting, and trying to do their college work in this masterful new play by Natalie Margolin (The Party Hop) that sneaks up on you like a jagged little pill taken on a full stomach. It’s one of the most authentic unwrappings of what it must feel like to be a college-aged young woman in those long-lost days of Obama. Their language and angles are reminiscent of that time, moving freely about the space, with books and laptops in hand, eating and commenting forever on everything from the best things to dip in hummus to their counted Adderall pill-popping protocols. It’s fascinatingly smart and clever in a sharply sneaky manner, finding the frazzled frenzy with force, as they all somewhat settle in for their last all-nighter hurrah and communion, with a surprise unpacking that pings in with detailed, deliberate, and smartly defined dynamics.
All Nighter, as directed most skillfully by Jaki Bradley (Access Theater’s Breeders), teases with us, slowly introducing us to this pack of “deeply complicated” young women who share more than just a home and a love of hummus. Their lives are entwined and embedded in each other’s insecurity and need for community in a way that feels completely organic and entirely authentic. They each find a unique framing that is both honest and dishonest at the same time, like most young people trying to find their formula in a chaotic world. Wrapped up in need and desire, with compassion and empathetic reliability thrown in from time to time in that forever effort to connect, the young women assemble, determined to finish their projects as they have done for years. First to arrive Darcie, portrayed fascinatingly by Kristine Frøseth (Apple TV+’s “The Bussaneers“) seems to be the one who is most determined to finish the massive amount of work required that night, finishing papers and study notes on her always active laptop, but what transpires between the sing-along dance and frantic work focused breaks is as compelling as it is exciting slash annoying, without ever revealing its hand until it has to.
Darcie is a pizza-cooking wonder, celebrated for her focus and her intelligence. She is joined soon after by the nervous Lizzy, captivatingly played by Havana Rose Liu (Hulu’s “No Exit“), whose gentle compulsiveness is as compelling as it is anxiety-producing. There is also the determined Tesse, tightly portrayed in depth by Alyah Chanelle Scott (Hulu’s “Reboot“), and finally the forceful engaging Jacqueline. Empathetically portrayed by a sharp Kathryn Gallagher (Broadway’s Jagged Little Pill), Jack holds the space with an open forceful care that is intoxicatingly appealing, even when her hand is played in ways that bend the rules of empathy and compassion. There is a fifth, but we have to wait a bit for the ferociously funny and annoying (in all the best ways) Wilma, playfully and powerfully portrayed by Julia Lester (Broadway’s Into the Woods), and costumed to perfection by Michelle J. Li (Broadway’s JOB), to make her grand emotive entrance into the space. Lester almost steals the show with her over-the-top rendering that finds a completely captivating depth and wiseness woven in secretly underneath her ferocious desire for attention, validation, and acceptance. But she isn’t alone in that, just more loud, and somehow more real and honest about it.
The set-up feels complete and authentically constructed when they all finally get to relocate to the table they call their own and settle themselves in after a flurry of well-choreographed movement. It is at this point in the night when All Nighter finally takes its much-needed turn, dodging around and digging into all the details that the play has so expertly scattered on and hidden around that table. It explodes and implodes with precision in the most deliciously unexpected and emotionally exacting manner, full of powerful complications and intensely disturbing revelations that floor the whole pack and the audience equally. Gallagher and Lester outshine almost everyone with their expertly delivered stance and need, matched in detail and determination by the rest of the pack of talented actors finding their core and throwing it with force at each other and themselves.
Played out with a tight, raw determination on a study hall playing field designed meticulously by Wilson Chin (MTC’s Cost of Living), with sharply focused lighting by Ben Stanton (Broadway’s Maybe Happy Ending) and a delicious wrecking ball sound design by M.L. Dogg (Broadway’s Here Lies Love), All Nighter unwraps the crazy messed up convictions and realizations that spill out without ultimately villainizing a soul, finding empathic framings to try to understand what is f*cked up with the world that these women have to exist in. “There is literally something wrong with you all,” one woman says to the group, as the Adderall-fueled frenzy sends these friends flying through the space, hurt and destroyed by actions made against one another yet desperate to hold onto some semblance of community and care.
“We’re all just deeply complicated,” is the reasoning, but the pointed, made-from-scratch moments find their spot and leave their mark. Each of these women unravels in deliberate focused perfection, giving us an authentic vantage point to take them all in with compassion and love. All those meaningful “Sorries” are parceled out, as exacting as those pills, connecting all the hypocritical dots in smartly constructed ways as we watch the frantic periods of work flesh out this All Nighter with clarity and focus. It’s thrilling, especially when it finally gathers itself together in the second half in an almost majestic manner, grabbing hold of all those casually tossed-out metaphorical pens, pills, and markers that we thought were just there for show and utilizing them all with precise fortitude. All those details were actually placed there wisely for a broader purpose, hidden with emotional content that when shoved together created a play so emotionally raw and empathetically powerful that it was impossible to not have our minds blown like it was hit by that timely wrecking ball. Our All Nighter eyes are forced wide open by this rendering, and even though it appears the work doesn’t get completed, the results are all A+.
