New Kid On the Block

What I liked

Nicky and Rev are both very good actors. The central idea of a jerk livestreaming being homeless for a week is an inherently interesting premise.

What I didn't like

I had trouble understanding what some of the actors said due to poor articulation and the acting on the whole was hit or miss.

Very few of the jokes landed for me, partly because most of the dialogue was quipping that wasn’t all that clever, but mainly because most of the jokes were at odds with each other thematically. There wasn’t enough commitment to style – the play wanted to be both wacky satire and also serious social commentary, but never found a way to marry the two.

This play broke my willing suspension of disbelief – I can get behind an outlandish premise, but nobody reacted to the situations presented in a way that real people would, and I think the play uses “ridiculous satire” as a shield for this sort of character behavior.

The emotional climax is sudden and unearned. I’m going to try hard not to get into spoiler territory, but the ending bothered me. While I understand that the protagonist needs to undergo growth, the fact is that he was rewarded for bad behavior in a way that I felt undermined the central message of the piece.

My overall impression

While I respect wanting to shine a light on what a serious problem homelessness is, this show mishandled the message it tried to impart. It wants to be ridiculous fun, it wants to be meaningful, but was ultimately neither.