Washington Post - Recommended
"...It's a fascinating comedic matrix that "An Octoroon" constructs, enlivened by JacobsJenkins's ear for absurdity and director Nataki Garrett's sure-handed production for Woolly Mammoth Theatre. Beginning with Odom and extending to eight other actors with evolved senses of humor, "An Octoroon" manages the wonderful trick of being smart all at once about the conventions of art in two different times. That antebellum audiences would have accepted as compelling what makes us so completely uncomfortable speaks to how far we've come and what we're still trying to get past. The appearances in Jacobs-Jenkins's play, too, of Br'er Rabbit (Jobari Parker-Namdar) remind us of the stereotypes in the old Uncle Remus folk stories and reinforce the sensation of a complicated legacy."
DC Theater Arts - Recommended
"...An Octoroon, with its sex slaves and its lynching and its disembodied (or alienated) "black" playwright, represented on a Washington, DC, stage, allows Americans to engage in a discussion about what race and power and identity politics might still mean to 'Merica now, and 'Merica tomorrow, before or after any new Civil War that might be coming."
MetroWeekly - Somewhat Recommended
"...These excellent players bring out the best in Jacobs-Jenkins' crazed ride, but they can't quite cover for what's missing: the kind of intellectual cogency that leads us somewhere new. It's a conclusion complicated by the fact that this is the same Jacobs-Jenkins that penned last season's superbly insightful, nuanced and often hilarious, Appropriate - another vision of the South and its complicated legacy. Such disparate work reveals a talented playwright who is brave enough to experiment. Hard to fault, if sometimes hard to follow."
MD Theatre Guide - Recommended
"...An Octoroon is the cherry on top of an only so-so season for Woolly Mammoth. Every moment in the almost three-hour long play is important, informative, engaging. Woolly Mammoth knows that they have something to be proud of on their hands."
Theatre Bloom - Highly Recommended
"...Definitely a conversation starter, Woolly Mammoth has succeeded in its mission of sparking dialogue between what's happening on stage and what's going through the minds of the audience with this final season offering."
DCTheatreScene - Somewhat Recommended
"...We can be thankful to Woolly Mammoth for giving us the opportunity to see for ourselves what the buzz is all about and for providing a slew of community discussions to get us through, which I can attest are truly enlightening, engaging, and helpful. It might take a while, but in its own way, humor breaks down the barriers -at least that's probably the hope."
Magic Time - Highly Recommended
"...Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins's An Octoroon wears irony on its sleeve with the same effrontery that three of its characters wear red, white, and black greasepaint to dissemble "race." Just opened at Woolly Mammoth, in a preconception-smashing production directed by Nataki Garrett, An Octoroon is among the most acclaimed recent works by playwrights of color that lampoon America's endemic racism with disarming cheek and wit."
BroadwayWorld - Highly Recommended
"...In the end, An Octoroon does not sit comfortably in any particular genre, and that is in its favor. It is part comedy, part tragedy, part farce, part truth. It may have been written in 1859, but as Jacobs-Jenkins shows us, our relationships with each other, given race, class, status, gender, are tales as old as time, and as new as this very moment. In this play's world, skin color is only face paint deep, words may reveal or obscure, explosions may be silent, and human beings may be animals. Not only is An Octoroon great theater, it is a testament to why we, as human beings, desperately need great theater to help us understand each other, and more importantly, understand ourselves. This is theater about theater about life. It's outrageously funny, deeply disturbing and comes highly recommended."
