Reviews NYCOff-Broadway Published 22 June 2024

Review: Find Me Here at Clubbed Thumb

The Wild Project ⋄ 19th -29th June 2024

A muted family dramedy is missing its mystical element and emotional engagement. Nicole Serratore reviews.

Nicole Serratore

Kathleen Tolan, Connie Schulman, and Lizbeth Mackay in Find Me Here (Photo: Maria Baranova)

Crystal Finn’s new play, Find Me Here, is full of characters searching for meaning in life and death but it is less legible in what it delivers in that quest. It is a jumbled amalgamation of characters musing on big themes in personal ways, but the mystical energy in the play just fizzles in Caitin Sullivan’s muted production.

Three sisters have gathered to read their father’s will. Deborah (Kathleen Tolan) has been in a cult for 30 years and is estranged from her late parents and her sons. Nancy (Lizbeth Mackay) has been worrying over everything her whole life but maybe not paying enough attention to her adult daughter, Kristen (Miriam Silverman). Nancy has a new boyfriend Mike (Keith Reddin) but she’s still kind of in love with her hippie-ish ex-husband, Leo (Frank Wood). Dee-Dee (Constance Schulman) has been traumatized by her parents in some unexplained way but seems to be in sync with her son Gabriel (Kyle Beltran) and daughter-in-law Esme (Shannon Tyo). Through grief, divorce, kids, and grandkids these sisters are still trying to understand each other and themselves.

Everyone here is a bit lost in some way or another (save Esme with a decisive performance from Tyo) but I wasn’t always sure of playwright Crystal Finn’s plan for them. They are contemplating the death of their family patriarch who they describe as a “tyrant” but they are also thinking about the ritual and experience that death has in store for them. Then in turn what meaning life has for them.

Some describe their vision of how they want to die or they don’t. But it is weighing on many of them. Yet, I didn’t find these monologues very revealing.

Deborah in her peaceful cult chill is maybe the most accepting of her journey. She says she will become invisible and asks Kristen‘s young daughter (who is literally invisible to us) to come find her in whatever form she has taken. She has her faith—as much as the rest of the family questions it. Tolan plays Deborah with a blissed-out ease.

Her quiet energy is meant to be juxtaposed against Nancy’ constant worrying. Nancy is non-stop neuroses and she can’t stop picking on people, but smothering them with a kind of love or duty, and then gets lost in her own endless fears. She’s somehow both outwardly pleasant but also a complete nightmare. Her “well-meaning” but oblivious nature is narcissistic and hurtful. But Mackay is maybe not quite as frantic or ridiculous as the role should be played. We are supposed to laugh a bit more at her but I found her more irritating than funny.

Schulman’s Dee-Dee is maybe a little more Southern fried than the rest of her sisters (there was an accent happening for no apparent reason) and while I thought she and Beltran shared a warm family dynamic I was puzzled as to who this character was for most of the play. I’m not sure Finn gave Schulman as much to work with as the other characters.

As much as this play is meant to be centered around the sisters, for my money, Tony-award-winner Miriam Silverman steals the show as Kristen. As an adult child of divorce losing her mind at being in the same room with her parents, she is very relatable. She captures that regressive nature of the adult who instantly becomes a child again trapped in an old family dynamic. Even a tense moment with her mother over her parenting her own child generates a precise frisson that is both adult and child in conflict with a parent. At the same time, Silverman has this wistful, faraway look that reflects a certain kind of contemplation in her character. She is trying to connect with her dad who is here now and one day he will not be. Silverman just brings so much heart and truth to her character.

Director Caitlin Sullivan doesn’t always control the rhythm and tone. There are laughs here but sometimes they are muffled. It’s not quite madcap enough nor totally naturalistic. The play is supposed to have these moments that flirt with the invisibility of Deborah and the grandchildren but it never felt like enough happened in the lighting or sound (or with the actors) to even suggest a otherworldly shift in the room. Several characters speak about searching for a power beyond themselves and I think the play wants to show us that…but the production never does.

The production ends up in a vague netherworld that allows some jokes to land but does not quite find its way to the play’s emotional core. Although Finn isn’t really doing a great job of leading us there either.

The low-key set by dots left me with questions. It had a confusing sense of indoors/outdoors. Most of the action takes place indoors so the set with teal fabric walls and a cushioned window seat makes sense. But then the room is dominated by a kind of conversation pit of wooden benches that look like outdoor teak furniture. They speak of the house with affection. This is a mountain/lake home of their late father but where it is, what era it was left in, is left to our imaginations.

I don’t mind filing in the gaps and letting a play establish its own world-building. But the writing did not have the confidence of its own convictions and I was adrift as the characters.


Nicole Serratore

Nicole Serratore writes about theater for Variety, The Stage, American Theatre magazine, and TDF Stages. She previously wrote for the Village Voice and Flavorpill. She was a co-host and co-producer of the Maxamoo theater podcast. She is a member of the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle.

Review: Find Me Here at Clubbed Thumb Show Info


Produced by Clubbed Thumb

Directed by Caitlin Sullivan

Written by Crystal Finn

Scenic Design dots

Costume Design Brenda Abbandandolo

Lighting Design Isabella Byrd

Sound Design Mikaal Sulaiman

Cast includes Constance Schulman, Lizbeth Mackay, Kathleen Tolan, Kyle Beltran, Miriam Silverman, Keith Reddin, Shannon Tyo, Frank Wood


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