The Humans (NHB Modern Plays) - Softcover

Overwhelmigly human... rich and resonant. --Evening Standard

Bitingly funny, bitterly sad... Everything suggests a big American family drama, and it's definitely steeped in that kind of play. But it becomes so much more... a bloody great stock-take of the American middle class... The writing is full of stunning rhythms with overlaps and cross-talk that seem completely natural... pulling all its referents in different directions to dissect them and build them into something new. Something familiar and not; something uncanny. --The Stage

A wonderful play - fiercely funny and profoundly moving, involving and frightening in almost equal measures. From the moment the six members of The Blake family gather at daughter Brigid's new underground duplex in New York to celebrate Thanksgiving, it holds you in its gentle grip and never lets you breathe until they depart at the close... it is an astonishing tour de force of story-telling; nothing happens, yet as the family talk and squabble we come to know and understand not only them, but also some of the fractures that are tearing apart American society... Exceptional. --whatsonstage.com

Breaking with tradition, Erik Blake has brought his Pennsylvania family to celebrate Thanksgiving at his daughter's apartment in lower Manhattan. Unfolding over a single scene, this "delirious tragicomedy" (Chicago Sun-Times) by acclaimed young playwright Stephen Karam "infuses the traditional kitchen-sink family drama with qualities of horror in his portentous and penetrating work of psychological unease" (Variety), creating an indelible family portrait. The Humans had its world premiere at the American Theater Company, Chicago, Illinois, in November 2014. It opened Off-Broadway at the Laura Pels Theatre in October 2015 in a limited run produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company, transferring to Broadway at the Helen Hayes Theatre, opening in February 2016. It was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Play, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Broadway Play, and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play.