The Humans by Stephen Karam

Breaking with tradition, Erik Blake has brought his Pennsylvania family to celebrate Thanksgiving at his daughter’s apartment in lower Manhattan. As darkness falls outside the ramshackle pre-war duplex, eerie things start to go bump in the night and the heart and horrors of the Blake clan are exposed.

The family play is American theater’s bread and butter — most of its other meals, too. But what distinguishes The Humans is how well it works on a specific, naturalistic level, diagnosing the particular troubles of the Blakes (job loss, romantic betrayal, mental and physical illness), while also allowing the family to stand in for an unnerved nation.

“Into the familiar dinner-table-drama genre the playwright has mixed the unexpected element of terror—or, rather, he has created a new element by bombarding one with the other. I should add that, for all this, the play is rackingly funny even as it pummels the heart and scares the bejesus out of you.” —New York Magazine.

The Humans is at times profound, irreverent, beautiful, funny, tragic, biting, awkward, unnerving, and poetic, but it is ALWAYS alive and it is ALWAYS human.