Review: ‘The Thanksgiving Play’ Is Anti-‘Woke’ Satire—to What End?

The running joke in The Thanksgiving Play (2nd Stage/Hayes Theater, booking to June 4) is squarely on the “performatively woke” white liberal do-gooder—because in their mission to do good, Larissa FastHorse’s satirical play suggests, there is such little thought and nuance it undermines everything they profess to hold dear. In their ceaseless determination and desperation to do the right thing, everything they overlook says much about their own deeper ignorance.

The Broadway play invites us to laugh at Logan (Tony Award-winning Katie Finneran) and Jaxton (Felicity star Scott Foley) at every turn. They are beyond-Granola, earnest and right-on, a real-life couple keen to mount a Thanksgiving play in a school that is thoroughly inclusive and culturally sensitive.

She’s a highly-strung former actor-turned-director, he does a lot of yoga and knows all the right things to say, right down to telling her of the gift of a new water bottle: “It’s made with recycled glass from broken windows in housing projects. It’s symbolic of the way we’re going to create this play. We start with this pile of jagged facts and misguided governmental policies and historical stereotypes about race then turn all that into something beautiful and dramatic and educational for the kids.”

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