BroadStreetReview: HOW & WHY is "Crackling... Instantly Engrossing... Ingeniously Realized"

Check out these excerpts from Alaina Mabaso's review of THE HOW AND THE WHY from Broad Street Review:

In THE HOW AND THE WHY, Sarah Treem rapidly unpacks a world of interpersonal aspersions, thwarted love, feminist struggle and scientific theory. Although her play is dense with themes and ideas, it’s a crackling two hours, thanks to Seth Rozin’s fast-paced direction and two character-driven actresses... Advancing a brand-new, controversial scientific theory is difficult enough, but it’s a grueling life’s work if you happen to be a woman... So theorizes Zelda (the well-grounded Janis Dardaris), an experienced evolutionary biologist, to her young acolyte Rachel (an achingly volatile Victoria Frings)... Treem sets the audience to the instantly engrossing task of discerning the relationship between Zelda and Rachel... provid[ing] especially fertile ground for many a potent meditation on sexism among scientists. By the time the sharpening personal dynamic between Zelda and Rachel expands to include arguments on marriage, pregnancy, parenthood and career, the play brims over while Zelda and Rachel continue to impugn each other’s intentions... Despite the intellectual weight of Treem’s script, Dardaris and Frings — no doubt guided by director Seth Rozin — deliver a thoroughly character-driven performance that makes two scenes of crackling dialogue the fastest two hours I’ve ever spent at the theater. Meghan Jones offers two ingeniously realized sets. Still, I left the Adrienne ruminating not on the characters’ fraught relationship but on the evolutionary theories advanced in Treem’s script. I wanted to corner the playwright (or some unsuspecting biologist) and pepper her with questions about evolutionary theory. That provocation alone made the evening worthwhile.

Read Alaina Mabaso's Entire Review at BroadStreetReview.com


Links to more information about THE HOW AND THE WHY:

Purchase Tickets

Watch the Video Trailer

Read Howard Shapiro's Philadelphia Inquirer Review

An Interview with Playwright Sarah Treem