One marker of the spurious issue play —a form the contemporary American theater features in surplus—is that it tends to be populated with puppets. Their inhabitants can, like the horror that is Tilly Norwood , look real, they can be loud or colorful or quirky, but ultimately they plug into a formula — they do what the playwright needs them to do.

That’s why it’s refreshing to come across a play like Preston Max Allen’s Caroline , the assured, affecting three-hander now getting its premiere at MCC under the emblematically thoughtful and ungilded direction of David Cromer. Allen is writing about something that’s in our newsfeeds daily, but crucially, that thing doesn’t flatten or predetermine his people. What he’s actually interested in are relationships, the interconnectedness of mes

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