When writer Suzanne Alexander (Audra McDonald) returns to her alma mater as a guest speaker, in which she explores the violence in her works, a dark mystery unravels. Adrienne Kennedy's Ohio State Murders is an intriguing and unusual suspense play, as well as a social pertinent look at the destructiveness of racism in our society.
McDonald is also performing a double role — playing both present-day and college-age Suzanne, where previous productions have cast two actors. It’s another means of showing how fresh decades-old wounds can feel, and their lifelong reverberations, while taking full advantage of McDonald’s versatility. Leon’s production presents a bold, and unmistakable, visual representation of Kennedy’s argument for literature and imagination as both proof of human horror and an essential escape from it. The set design by Beowulf Boritt, a suspended cascade of bookshelves, sharply lit by Allen Lee Hughes, might be too on the nose were it not so startlingly beautiful. By any obvious measure, Kennedy’s arrival on Broadway in her ninth decade is long overdue. Commercial theater has not generally been the most fertile ground for daring, confrontational work that spotlights the voices and experiences of the most marginalized. But when an exception takes root, with a team of artists as visionary as these, it’s certainly worth the wait.
Unlike previous stagings of the play, Off Broadway and elsewhere, the Broadway production features McDonald as both the younger and older versions of Suzanne, and here the actor is a marvel, conveying a student’s excitement with a heady new world that she’ll soon learn doesn’t want her, and as an accomplished author whose success can’t outrun her grief. It’s in the portrayal of those contrasts that McDonald finds something close to perfection in a flawed production.
2007 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
2022 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2023 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Lead Performance in a Play | Audra McDonald |
2023 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Lighting Design of a Play | Allen Lee Hughes |
2023 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Play | Ohio State Murders |
2023 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Scenic Design of a Play | Beowulf Boritt |
2023 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Sound Design of a Play | Justin Ellington |
2023 | Drama League Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Play | Ohio State Murders |
2023 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Lead Performer in a Broadway Play | Audra McDonald |
2023 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Play | Ohio State Murders |
2023 | Tony Awards | Best Actress in a Leading Role in a Play | Audra McDonald |
Videos