Bob Verini – ArtsInLA
If there’s a more sheerly interesting playwright in the United States these days than Bruce Norris, I don’t know who it is. In a continuing series of audacious, ambitious comedies, he has remained resolutely non-P.C. in questioning some of our culture’s most cherished assumptions on race (his Pulitzer winner Clybourne Park), compassionate liberalism (The Pain and the Itch), wounded warriors (Purple Heart), and sexual obsession (The Infidel). Read more…
Steven Leigh Morris – LA Weekly
In Bruce Norris’ stark comedy A Parallelogram, 30-ish Bee (Marin Ireland) — a regional manager for Rite Aid, a job that’s “very fulfilling,” she quips — is in this inexorably doomed relationship with a slightly older man (Tom Irwin) whom, later in the play, the older Bee (Marylouise Burke) will refer to as “a gigantic asshole.”
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Pauline Adamek – ArtsBeatLA
An existential “comedy” in the bleakest sense, Bruce Norris’ new play A Parallelogram posits the question “What would you do if you knew your future but couldn’t do anything to change it?” and then explores the various facets of this conceit. Read more…
Sharon Perlmutter – Talkin’ Broadway
Bad news, nerds: Bruce Norris’s A Parallelogram is not about math. Good news, though: It’s about time travel. Specifically, the play considers what happens when a woman, Bee, is visited by her future self (the unimaginatively named Bee 2), who brings some bad news about the future—both Bee’s personal future and the overall future of people on the planet.
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Les Spindle – Frontiers L.A.
The Steppenwolf-bred works of fast-rising playwright Bruce Norris—notably The Pain and the Itch and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Clybourne Park (seen at the Mark Taper Forum last season)—have explored thought-provoking themes in inventive and provocative ways. Those familiar with these earlier works shouldn’t be surprised that Norris’ new play, A Parallelogram, thrives on unexpected twists and turns and flights of fancy. It will keep viewers on their toes to fathom its unconventional dramatic conceits and sharp segues between sly humor and cerebral reflections.
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Now running through August 18.