Plano by Will Arbery

Plano Reviews

• 
  Doug

  Updated review, 7/'24:
  
  Odd how something can change dramatically upon a reread - as you can see, I was initially somewhat intrigued by this play and originally rated it 4 stars - on this reread (after reading Arbery's latest two plays), I was very much DISenchanted - the play seemed much more nonsensical, arbitrary and downright boring (I almost DNF'd it halfway through, but persevered!). But from the mostly positive reviews, it seems it played well.
  
  
  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/th...
  
  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/24/th...
  
  https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-a...
  
  https://www.chicagotribune.com/2020/0...
  
  https://sightlinesmag.org/paper-chair...
  
  
  Original review: Since Arbery just won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama with another of his plays, I decided to read all of his published oeuvre. He's definitely a sui generis playwright, although this has whiffs of both
  The Bald Soprano and
  The American Dream. Not quite so sure about how it would play (the author states emphatically that the 71 pages should be played at a lightening speed, so the running time is no more than 77 minutes!) and some of the stage directions seem impossible to actually stage ('the air changes') ... but I'd love to see this performed - and much of it is VERY funny.
• 
  Jacob MacDonald

  I have a mighty proximity and recency bias towards Plano. The directions, after all, can be likely-accurately read as generated directions from "Oak Cliff" to "Plano", yet feel bizarrely personal: What is near the Plano Municipal Center anyway? And at least one reviewer reads the cowboy bar as part of that city. Certainly, Plano's image in all but the most literal text is as in a one-of-a-kind mirror. My dramatic referents (time loop, city, family) are few, so I can only see the play as a snack-Finnegan's Wake of DFW. Sans hyperpolyglot acrobatics.
• 
  Alex

  so good i want to barf !!! :)
• 
  mar

  ........WHAT?
• 
  Carolyn Best

  uh oh favorite play ever
• 
  James Brautigam

  This was good. I should have spaced this place out because of how non-linear it feels to try and get through it in an afternoon.
  
  There is definitely an idea here though that would be wonderful for directing.
  
  Much of this play relies on it's pacing. If you slow down for a hair, it makes the text a little more harder to understand.
  
  Overall, this was a crazy read and I'd recommend it to any lover of plays.
• 
  Katie Burton

  Wonderful and fast-placed exploration of women and their ghosts
• 
  Alix Curnow

  i liked this one
• 
  Ashley Campbell

  yes yes yes I said I’ll read this later it is later it’s the best thing I’ve read today
• 
  Mya Ross

  While it wasn’t the best book, mainly because it was very confusing, it was also very interesting because of its content. I have absolutely no idea how to describe what I read, but in some instances it felt very existential which made me question my reality, and also have a better appreciation for life. I enjoyed how some of it made me feel, but other parts were confusing and made me lose interest.
  
  Reading it again: It was good to read it again; this time I annotated. I didn’t feel the same existential feelings I did the first time, but I looked more closely at time in the play and it started to make more sense. Time seems to be this thing that happens all at once, and there’s no real present. I liked looking at it more analytically, it gave me a different perspective of the play. I didn’t enjoy it as much as the first time since I already knew what was happening and I was only reading it again to analyze it which made it a little more boring, but all in all it was still good.