Family Troubles

Pultizer Prize finalist Stephen Karam returns to the Roundabout Theatre Company with a brand new play about The Blakes, a middle class family whose Thanksgiving dinner is the scene of escalating anxiety and existential horror. Written as a single 90-minute scene, the work first premiered at the American Theater Company in Chicago last year and received great plaudits for its tightly controlled sense of dread and bursts of hilarity.

This Off-Broadway production is the latest in Roundabut Theatre's New Play initiative, which also commissioned Karam's 2007 Speech & Debate. The Humans is directed by two-time Tony winner Joe Mantello (An Act of God) and stars Tony nominees Jayne Houdyshell (Follies) and Reed Birney (Netflix's House of Cards).

What is The Humans About?

The Blake family usually spend their thanksgiving in Pennsylvania, but this year they're all heading to daughter Brigid's brand new Manhattan apartment. The place is barely furnished, and the whir of the washing machine, the buzz of a lightbulb and the sudden thumps emanating from the apartment upstairs all add to an air of growing unease around the dinner table, and a sense that all is not well underneath the Blakes' middle class facade.