Written by Lisa Loomer
Directed by Mark Brokaw
Synopsis: Distracted is a fast-paced and disarmingly funny look at parenting in the age of the Internet and Ritalin. Nixon plays a contemporary American mom who reaches out to teachers, psychotherapists, and neighbors to figure out if Attention Deficit Disorder is the root of her son's problems.
NEW YORK TIMES:
"It’s just that “Distracted,” which opened Wednesday night at the Laura Pels Theater in an attractively acted production starring Cynthia Nixon, often feels like little more than a compilation of jokes and observations that have been made, ad nauseam, about this disorder during the last decade. "
Read the whole review HERE.
NEW YORK POST:
"Loaded with talking points - nature vs. nurture, shrinking attention spans, Ritalin - "Distracted" could easily have turned into the kind of anguished naturalistic melodrama even Lifetime doesn't do anymore. Thankfully, Loomer ("Living Out") is too skilled to fall into that hoary trap, and her metatheatrical tricks inject welcome levity into a fraught topic: Should childhood be cured or endured?"
Read the whole review HERE.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS:
"Director Mark Brokaw keeps the actors, video and even an occasional chair gliding along smoothly and accessibly, though I left puzzled: By the time the adorable Jesse appears in the final moments, I wondered if the play may have all been in the dizzied mind of Mama, who never leaves the stage nor changes out of her brown cords and green V-neck sweater. The question isn't distracting. It just adds a layer of mystery. "
Read the whole review HERE.
THEATERMANIA:
"For her part, Loomer studies the to-medicate-or-not-to-medicate controversy from every angle, like a child intrigued by a shiny object. Yet, in the end, Distracted is not a dull medical treatise but a wake-up call encoded in nonstop laughter. "
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VARIETY:
"Loomer has packaged her thoughts, along with a Google glut of research and a full spectrum of conflicting points of view, into a brisk, occasionally clever seriocomedy about one mother's quest to deal with her son's possible ADD (she prefers the old-school acronym to the more cumbersome ADHD). But there's a difference between asking an audience to witness the challenges of understanding and coping with a neurobehavioral disorder and forcing them unrelentingly to experience that state. Most of us are stressed enough already, OK? "
Read the whole review HERE.
BACKSTAGE:
"Loomer is telling a potentially deeply moving tale, but in director Mark Brokaw's well-observed yet somewhat frenetic staging, audiences may find themselves as overwhelmed as Jesse's mom. "
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TIME OUT NY:
"Okay, take a breath, before you forget: Distracted is my favorite comedy of the year so far, a spring-jointed issue play hyperactive enough to tickle both your brain and your funny bone. "
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NEW YORK MAGAZINE:
"Lisa Loomer’s Distracted is a fast, frazzled, made-for-TV dramedy that’s so strenuously au courant, it may already be obsolete. "
Read the whole review HERE.
