‘Skeleton Crew’ Broadway Review: Phylicia Rashad Leads Powerful Drama Of Factory Life

deadline.com:

In the most cramped of times – days as economically and emotionally pinched as the ones we’re living through now, and the ones we survived (or didn’t) in 2008 – theater can remind us of, or point the way to, some sense of emotional generosity, of expansive spirit, of connection.

Dominique Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew does all that and more, finding hope in the unlikeliest of places, like a cluttered, ramshackle break room of a noisy, about-to-fail factory in an about-to-fail city like Detroit.Directed with vitality by Ruben Santiago-Hudson – his second victory this Broadway season following the fall’s Lackawanna Blues – and performed by an ensemble cast that matches a powerful Phylicia Rashad, Skeleton Crew is a play that feels even more pertinent now than it did when it landed in a stellar Off Broadway production back in 2016.

The play was terrific then. It’s essential now.Opening tonight at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, this Manhattan Theatre Club presentation examines the barriers and restrictions that pit worker against worker, life against life.

The play asks what the individual owes the community, and what the community owes in return. How much should any one person be willing to sacrifice for the sake of her co-workers?