stunning
Sixteen year old Lily knows nothing beyond the Syrian-Jewish community in Brooklyn where she lives a cloistered life with her much older husband. Soon an unlikely relationship with her enigmatic African-American maid opens Lily’s world to new possibilities – but at a big price. This daring new work shifts from caustic satire to violent drama as it exposes the ways we invent and defend our identities in the melting-pot of America.
Cast Requirements
2M, 4W
Honors
Whiting Writers' Award (2010), Nominated for the Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play (2009), Lucille Lortel Award Nominee for Best Actress (Cristin Milioti)
Publisher
Samuel French, TCG
Press
"Stunning dazzles... wonderful...The tonal shifts between tension and comedy are perfectly mastered, as are the incremental changes in power among the characters."
Elizabeth Vincentelli, NY Post
"This is where Adjmi's real strength lies: he understands the clannish behavior of women -- the rivalries, the bullying, the identification, the rejection, and the bonding that goes on among them. ... an artist whose next project I can't wait to see."
Hilton Als, The New Yorker
"Nearly everything about David Adjmi's Stunning has an original ring to it, from the setting -- Brooklyn's insular Syrian-Jewish community -- to the brassy bleat of the dialogue."
Adam Feldman, Time Out
"Stunning, a stinging portrait of an insular Syrian Jewish community in contemporary Brooklyn, begins as stylized satire, moves quickly into urban fairy tale and finally emerges as a melodramatic tragedy... virtuosic playwright David Adjmi nicely evokes an arrestingly skewed subculture onstage."
New York Times
"Razor-sharp satirical tragedy... Stunning frequently lives up to its name, offering a brutal yet witty view of groupthink and slippery identity politics among Syrian Jews in Brooklyn...the hippest ticket in town" (Top Ten of 2009)
David Cote, Time Out
"David Adjmi's eye-opening drama about a despotic rag merchant, his tyrannized child bride and the black maid who challenges the medieval customs of their domestic life has a chilling impact. Riveting performances and super-stylish staging polish the play's satirical weapons of high dudgeon, while adding to the luster of LCT3, the developmental wing of Lincoln Center currently making a splash in its inaugural season." Marilyn Stasio, Variety
"David Adjmi's off-Broadway debut is a striking, and yes, stunning black satire of the insular Syrian-Jewish community in Midwood, Brooklyn." Flavorpill
"The advantage of writing about something you know pays off handsomely for multi-award-winning playwright David Adjmi...Careening courageously, but never recklessly, between satire and melodrama —and ultimately tragedy— Stunning is an eye-opening, intimately focused look into the marriage of a couple within a sect that guards its insularity and its ingrained religious/cultural identity...astonishingly provocative"
Curtain Up
Production and Development History
Readings and Workshops: New York Theatre Workshop, Sundance/UCross Residency. Productions: Woolly Mammoth Theatre (World Premiere, 2008), Lincoln Center Theatre/LCT3 (2009)