Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Extremities are the name of the game in the return of Hoi Polloi’s production of FAMILY by Celine Song

• By drediman
• September 19, 2025
• No Comments

Last night, I ventured down to La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, where I caught Hoi Polloi’s production of Family by Celine Song (Song is perhaps best known for penning films such as Past Lives and Materialists). The production previously enjoyed a sold out run — literally in a townhouse — which was notable for its exceeding intimacy. For the current stint at La MaMa’s Downstairs space, Alec Duffy’s staging has been expanded and re-imagined; the play now takes place within an oppressive cage, within which the actors restlessly prowl like feral animals. In short, the play tells the story of three jobless half-siblings who, rather unsuccessfully, hash out their grievances after attending the funeral of their mutual father (each sibling has a different mother).

To be sure, the piece is a far cry from Song’s Past Lives, a luminous film that thrived on gentleness and human subtleties. As a portrait of three disturbed young adults, Family is a howl of a play that unsettlingly depicts the effects of the trauma caused by a toxic father and the legacy he’s left behind. Suffice to say, the work is not for the squeamish, with its unrelenting engagement with severely dark stuff — including rape, incest, and plenty of domestic violence — as the siblings attempt to establish familial hierarchy in the wake of their father’s death. Taking inspiration from absurdist theater — and to some extent devised theater — the play unfolds organically with the escalating intensity of a fever dream, building to a level of depravity that’s both repulsive yet hard not to watch. Even if it doesn’t quite click as an allegory for the American psyche, the work is nevertheless a jolt of theatrical imagination.

What the play has lost in intimacy since its last mounting, it has gained in the visceral punch afforded by an immersive, technically impressive production, most notably via enhanced sound, lighting, and scenic elements (the great Mimi Lien has been tapped as a design consultant). The trio of performances at the heart of Family — Luis Feliciano, Jonah O’Hara-David, and Izabel Mar — remain blood curdling in their extremities. Indeed, each gives fearless, astonishingly physical performances (particularly Feliciano and O’Hara-David; it’s surprising that they haven’t injured themselves) that muscle through some of Song’s murkier passages. Their tremendous comfort level with and trust in each other also allow them to navigate the play’s more grotesque and graphic sequences without a flinch.

RECOMMENDED

FAMILY
Off-Broadway, Play
Hoi Polloi at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club
1 hour, 15 minutes (without an intermission)
Through September 28