'Dad Don't Read This' Off-Broadway review — a thrilling and intimate portrait of teen girlhood

Read our review of Dad Don't Read This off Broadway, a new play by Eliya Smith running at the Greenwich House Theater after an acclaimed premiere at St. Luke’s Theatre.

Summary

• Eliya Smith's Dad Don’t Read This is a coming-of-age play about four teenage girls at their weekly sleepovers in surburban Ohio
• The show is more character-driven than plot-driven and creates captivatingly complex portraits of the girls' relationships; self-identities; insecurities; and hopes
• The show is recommended for fans of other teen-girl coming-of-age shows like John Proctor Is the Villain; The Wolves; and Grief Camp (also by Smith)

Someplace, somewhere, perhaps in Tallahassee or Portland or Hartford, this Friday, teenage girls will be having a sleepover. There will be a mix of camaraderie, competition, and closeness. They’ll gossip about classmates, play games, and tell secrets. Every evening at the Greenwich House Theater, at Eliya Smith’s Dad Don’t Read This, you can step into that world via the slumber party of four young girls in suburban Ohio, on the cusp of adulthood and already helpless to time, clamoring to figure out who they’re supposed to be.

Director Chloe Claudel and a magnificent cast of four conjure the electric energy of millennial teens hanging out, playing The Sims on a Dell laptop computer, dancing around to Jennifer Lopez, and lobbing their warmth back and forth among one another. Noelle (Renee-Nicole Powell) is matter-of-fact, Sophie (Sophie Rossman) always wants to go to bed early, Lida (Kayta Thomas) is at once brash and deeply self-conscious, and Mal (Amalia Yoo) is cagey but demands openness from everyone else.

Mal’s obsession with The Sims plays nicely into the evolution of coming-of-age plays, like the recent John Proctor Is the Villain or Smith's Grief Camp, in terms of giving the characters a world where they test out different, even idealized, versions of themselves. But more than the classroom of John Proctor or the summer camp of Grief Camp, The Sims’s inherently digital nature articulates a change in how young people explore their identity formation digitally and creates a stark contrast against its characters' ultimate indecision. The four girls seem to feel like things are happening to them, rather than being able to exert agency in their lives.

Dad Don’t Read This is fairly plotless, heightening its hypernaturalism and conveying the intimacy the characters cultivate with one another — and how it easily, and sometimes unpredictably, turns to cruelty. This dynamic is banal and yet the most important thing to these girls in the moment. The pangs of trying to imagine a different version of your present or future life, while fearing it'll never come to be, haunt this show even in its many moments of thrall and ecstasy. And when there’s conflict in the group, there’s a spark in the air thanks to the cast’s easy chemistry.

Dad Don’t Read This is fueled by the intensity of these small moments that accumulate: how you tell your friends things, the tiny misunderstandings that create an ever-growing wedge, the petty jealousies of who hangs out with whom and when, the thrill of dancing around in your room, the feverish anticipation of hearing something new about the person at school whom you all dislike (or maybe not). It's like we're peeking into moments we shouldn’t: There’s an intoxicating danger to listening to young girls break up and make up, these tiny moments representative of the choices they make to become themselves.

Dad Don’t Read This summary

In suburban Ohio, four teenage girls — Mal, Noelle, Sophie, and Lida — gather for a weekly slumber party to talk about their dysfunctional parents, their hopes of getting out of their home state, and jump on the bed, all while playing The Sims.

Eliya Smith's play debuted at St. Luke's Theatre earlier this year and, having received widespread acclaim, returns at the Greenwich House Theater for an encore run through July 11.

What to expect at Dad Don’t Read This

At St Luke’s, Dad Don’t Read This played in the round. The Greenwich House production is a traditional proscenium staging. Although the excellent bedroom stage, by scenic designer Forest Entsminger, is a little smaller, the show remains as delightful and tender as before.

What audiences are saying about Dad Don’t Read This

Audiences have shared mostly positive responses to the play on online forums like Instagram, Reddit, and the theatre review and tracking app Mezzanine.

• “One of the best plays I’ve ever seen. The direction was incredible, and the performances were outstanding. It really spoke to something deep in my experience of being someone from Ohio who wanted to get out. It spoke to escpais, disassociation, desire, constraint, harmony, and discord.” - Mezzanine user Jay Griffin
• "They are obsessed with The Sims, and there are these correlations being made between being a teenage girl, being an artist, and how that can make you feel like an NPC trapped in a game where the rules are largely undefined. And it's really good!" - Instagram user @gracewalkerrr
• “Talented cast but sadly did not like the play.” - Mezzanine user Greta Swartz
• "If you liked John Proctor is the Villain, All Nighter (off Bway), Dilaria (off Bway)… it’s right up your alley. Sometimes it was a little hard to follow the dialogue when they talked over each other, and I’m a little unclear on some of the back stories but it definitely captured high school girlhood." - Reddit user u/andreagc1092

Who should see Dad Don’t Read This

• Eliya Smith’s Grief Camp from last year was a startling debut, and she’s followed it up with an even more controlled and tightly assembled slice-of-life portrait of young adulthood. Fans of that show won't want to miss this one.
• Fans of other coming-of-age plays centered on teen girls, like Kimberly Belflower's John Proctor is the Villain and Sarah DeLappe's The Wolves, will want to see the latest entry in the genre.
• Fans of Amalia Yoo's performance as Raelynn in John Proctor will relish her prickly Mal, bursting with contradiction and intense yearning.
• Sophie Rossman delivers one of the show’s best monologues and does some incredible footwork in an incredibly moving moment.
• Kayta Thomas perfectly embodies the rush of just doing something unrestrained, and the quick poisonous feeling of regret that infects the body immediately afterwards.

Learn more about Dad Don’t Read This off Broadway

A work of shocking, thrilling intimacy, Dad Don’t Read This invites the audience to slip on their pajamas and revel in the freedom, and anxiety-ridden constraint, of youth as it haphazrdly transforms.

Learn more and get Dad Don't Read This tickets on New York Theatre Guide. Dad Don't Read This is at the Greenwich House Theater through July 11.

Photo credit: Dad Don't Read This off Broadway. (Photos by Maria Baranova)