REVIEWS

“At the end of James Ijames’s whip-smart satire “TJ Loves Sally 4 Ever” (which you would be wise to race to see), we in the audience waited for what felt like minutes. But there was no bow from the actors, who had already left the stage.

That’s when it sank in. The beautiful dare the show had offered us in its final lines? We were expected to take it. Or not. Either way, we had a decision to make as we left the theater — voting, with our very bodies, for the kind of future we want to see.” Laura Collins-Hughes for The New York Times.

“Many emotions vie for dominance among the young men living in limbo in “Kill Move Paradise,” the bleak and beautiful new drama by James Ijames...

Kill Move Paradise is a singularly affecting contribution to a niche genre of theater that often comes across as labored and contrived. I mean plays set in an afterlife where the deceased see their time on earth through the prism of eternity.

Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit” is probably the best known (and best) of these. But even it has a gimmicky, “gotcha” quality associated with “Twilight Zone” episodes, concluding with the epigrammatic exclamation point that “hell is just other people.”

Mr. Ijames’s play has no sense of an ending, or of resolution. It takes place in a nightmare of history, in which events are repeated, fugue-like, into eternity. (In this sense, the early work of Suzan-Lori Parks comes to mind.)" - Ben Brantley for the New York Time

"Ijames has created a piece in which every expectation (internal and external) and stereotype gets turned inside out. Also, it’s hilarious, and not just in a jokes-that-land way (though it’s also that) but in a smart, Diana-Ross-appears-as-some-version-of-Tony-Kushner’s-Avenging-Angel way."

"Without saying any of it outright, Ijames’s script calls to mind Sarah Baartman; tourists taking selfies in front of Kara Walker’s massive sculpture, A Subtlety; Beyoncé; and other representations of black women in art, media, and life." - Wendy Rosenfield for Broad Street Review

"WHITE is pure gold.

James Ijames’ audacious and hilarious new play takes on racism, sexism, and a handful of other isms. It’s a comedy, but its message is serious. It’s bold, outlandish, insightful, and as exciting a play as you’re likely to see this year."- Tim Dunleavy for DC Metro Theater Arts

"In short, there's a lot of talk about "new work" in theater and opera in this town, but Moon Man Walk provides the kind of artistic quality that the Philadelphia arts community needs to not only achieve with new works but invest in." - Bryan Butler for Philadelphia Magazine

"Moon Man is also specifically about space in the form of a family story — a well-meaning fiction, really — that Monarch’s mother told him to explain his absent father. He was, she explains, part of the first moon mission — and was accidentally left behind when the rest of the astronauts returned to earth. The story is both sweet and sad, which is the characteristic tone of Ijames’ writing. The stranded moon man is the play’s best and most original idea, and it brings out Ijames’ loveliest work." - David Anthony Fox for Philadelphia City Paper