The Humans

In The Humans, Stephen Karam's funny, sad, squirmily accurate play about family dynamics in troubling times, the supernatural is repeatedly implied. The newly rented, ground-floor New York apartment the play is set in--creepy enough as it is in its whitewashed, prewar emptiness--makes all kinds of strange creaks and groans, is subject to frequent and random power outages, and is regularly stomped upon by a never-seen upstairs neighbor who is, even by New York standards, excessively noisy. Family members talk over dinner about the unknown: scary comic book creatures, brushes with death, strange and unsettling dreams. And while the ending of The Humans builds toward a climax befitting the kind of terrifying surprise one expects of a horror flick, the eerie vibe infusing this smart, affecting play ultimately has little, if anything, to do with the otherworldly. People, it turns out--especially the ones you love and trust the most--can burrow into and fuck with your head way better than any ghost can. Especially when they, like you, are preoccupied with the most terrifying of human anxieties: rejection, poverty, sickness, age, death.

Joan Marcus

Guards at the Taj

Doug Hamilton

Rajiv Joseph's stunning heart-breaker of a play, Guards at the Taj, is currently running through the end of June at Atlantic Theater Company's Linda Gross Theater. It is a beautiful production: crisply directed by Amy Morton, sumptuously lit by David Weiner, and superbly acted by Omar Metwally (Humayun) and Arian Moayed (Babur). I hope it gets extended, and I hope you get the chance to see it.

Guards at the Taj is similar to Joseph's Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo in its moody ruminations and its gently absurdist bent. But it is a smaller, more carefully constructed, and thus more emotionally satisfying affair: two characters, two sets, five brief and tautly constructed scenes. The show examines a few years in the lives of two (very) low-level imperial guards in Agra, India during the mid-1600s. Humayun and Babur are just as lost and yearning as many of the characters in Bengal Tiger were. But while that play felt looser and less cohesive, Taj zooms in on its characters' preoccupations, philosophies, emotional needs, strengths and weaknesses. Also, their lifelong friendship and love for one another, which is central to this play's warm, if also rather bloody, heart.