Prayer for the French Republic Reviews

Washington Post- Recommended

"...Director Hayley Finn’s production, her first as incoming artistic director of Theater J, grounds the action on an intimate scale. While last season’s Broadway premiere inflated Harmon’s comedy to fill the room, here the show assumes a more true-to-life size, in the modest but still chic Paris apartment designed by Misha Kachman. If some of even the more obvious humor doesn’t land, that may be due to the volatility of the context: The play premiered off Broadway in 2022, transferred in the months following Oct. 7 last fall, and meets audiences where we are now."

DC Theater Arts- Highly Recommended

"...In his ambitious Prayer for the French Republic, Joshua Harmon explores the notion of safety as he focuses on a Jewish family living in post-World War II Paris and their descendants who still live there in 2016-2017. Harmon's 2022 play, which premiered Off-Broadway and then moved to Broadway in 2023, is receiving its DC regional premiere at Theater J. The theater's artistic director, Hayley Finn, directs this soul-stirring work."

MetroWeekly- Highly Recommended

"...Nickell’s narration also serves the production well, breathing life into stories of the Salomon’s past, and their dense family history. The play proceeds as an elegant dance between the past and present, scenes shifting from the Salomon’s in the 1940s to the Benhamou’s in 2016, the action and transitions all smoothly staged by director Hayley Finn."

MD Theatre Guide- Highly Recommended

"...Joshua Harmon’s 2024 Tony-nominated, epically expansive script, “Prayer for the French Republic,” investigates the horrors of the Holocaust, albeit as more of a side note than headline, holding the atrocities up as a sort of generational mirror to events transpiring in modern-day France. This is right after Trump has just been elected the first time, when hatred and attacks against Jewish people are on the rise, and following something of an exodus of Jews out of Paris."