• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Reviews from Broadway and Beyond

  • Now Playing
  • Recently Opened
    • Broadway
    • Off-Broadway
    • Beyond
  • Critics’ Picks
  • Our Critics
    • About Us
    • Melissa Rose Bernardo
    • Michael Feingold
    • David Finkle
    • Will Friedwald
    • Elysa Gardner
    • Sandy MacDonald
    • Jesse Oxfeld
    • MICHAEL SOMMERS
    • Steven Suskin
    • Frank Scheck
    • Roma Torre
    • Bob Verini
  • Sign Up
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Now Playing
  • Recently Opened
    • Broadway
    • Off-Broadway
    • Beyond
  • Critics’ Picks
  • Our Critics
    • About Us
    • Melissa Rose Bernardo
    • Michael Feingold
    • David Finkle
    • Will Friedwald
    • Elysa Gardner
    • Sandy MacDonald
    • Jesse Oxfeld
    • MICHAEL SOMMERS
    • Steven Suskin
    • Frank Scheck
    • Roma Torre
    • Bob Verini
  • Sign Up
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
February 25, 2020 9:52 pm

Dana H.: Giving Voice to a Captive Held in Plain Sight

By Michael Sommers

★★★☆☆ Deirdre O'Connell delivers a striking portrait of a woman in distress

Deirdre O’Connell performs Dana H. Photo: Carol Rosegg

In recent seasons, Lucas Hnath has risen to prominence as an award-winning playwright with his out of the ordinary dramas such as Hillary and Clinton, Red Speedo, and especially A Doll’s House, Part 2, which many companies have produced since its Broadway debut in 2017.

Hnath’s latest play, Dana H., which opened Tuesday at the Vineyard Theatre, is an extremely personal work since it depicts his own mother.

This is an amazing real-life story. Hnath’s mother, Dana Higginbotham, was employed as a chaplain in a psychiatric unit in a Florida hospital. In 1997, when Hnath was studying at New York University, Dana was assaulted and kidnapped by a patient.

[Read Steven Suskin’s ★★★★☆ review here.]

Dana’s abductor, Jim, was a suicidal ex-convict with ties to the Aryan Brotherhood (with the tattoos to match). Somehow Jim kept Dana captive for five months as he stashed her away in motels around Florida. Hidden in plain view, the disoriented Dana did not manage to escape until Jim finally flipped out in a violent episode.

Without telling too much of this tale, let’s only note that in the aftermath of her ordeal, Dana did not manage to return to her family for two more years. It’s a strange story.

Dana H. and its production turn out to be unusual as well.

Rather than dramatize his mother’s nightmare in a conventional manner, Hnath connected Dana with Steve Cosson, the artistic director of The Civilians, who interviewed her in a series of taped sessions in 2015. Then working with sound designer Mikhail Fiksel, the playwright edited and shaped the actual recordings into a soundtrack.

Accompanied by a backstage crew member, Deirdre O’Connell walks onto designer Andrew Boyce’s realistic setting of a dreary motel room. The technician wires up the actor with earbuds and leaves her sitting on a chair in the middle of the room. O’Connell blinks towards the control booth and soon starts to lip-sync Dana’s voice as she tells her story.

The 70-minute soundtrack cultivates a deliberate rawness as Dana’s ugly experiences are patched together, along with obvious blips and background noises, with some of Cosson’s questions and empathetic responses. Meanwhile, Les Waters, the director, keeps O’Connell literally a captive seated in that chair as she silently relates Dana’s abduction along with the soundtrack.

An exceptional actor, O’Connell precisely matches her lips to Dana’s voice while her eloquent face, eyes, and surprisingly minimal body language convey the woman’s fearful emotions. It is a remarkably expressive performance.

Perhaps two thirds of the way through the narrative, events become so overwhelming that the soundtrack and Paul Toben’s lighting design go totally haywire with a crescendo of overlapping voices, wildly fluctuating lighting, and other intense effects. At this critical point, I could not figure out what was happening, frankly, and probably was not the only spectator to feel temporarily adrift.

Subsequently, the remainder of Dana’s narrative seems like an extended epilogue, complete with unexplained mysteries of its own and sidebar anecdotes regarding her work as a chaplain in a hospice assisting people to gently leave this world. Possibly the playwright intends to point to Dana’s deeply spiritual nature as an explanation of how she was able to survive those terrible months spent with a violent madman.

Although the harrowing story of Dana H. does not entirely satisfy, and Hnath’s experiment with a soundtrack approach to its stage realization seems too tricky for its own good, Deirdre O’Connell delivers a vital, authentic performance that anchors the work in the truth that it hopes to tell.

Dana H. opened February 25, 2020, at the Vineyard Theater and runs through April 11. Tickets and information: vineyardtheatre.org

About Michael Sommers

Michael Sommers has written about the New York and regional theater scenes since 1981. He served two terms as president of the New York Drama Critics Circle and was the longtime chief reviewer for The Star-Ledger and the Newhouse News Service. For an archive of Village Voice reviews, go here. Email: michael@nystagereview.com.

Primary Sidebar

Creditors: Strindberg Updated, For Better and Worse

By Frank Scheck

★★★★☆ Liev Schreiber, Maggie Siff, and Justice Smith star in Jen Silverman's adaptation of Strindberg's classic drama.

Creditors: Love, Marriage, and Maddening Mind Games

By Melissa Rose Bernardo

★★★☆☆ Ian Rickson directs the rarely performed Strindberg work, with a refresh from playwright Jen Silverman

Goddess: A Myth-Making, Magical New Musical

By Melissa Rose Bernardo

★★★★☆ A luminous Amber Iman casts a spell in an ambitious Kenya-set show at the Public Theater

Lights Out, Nat King Cole: Smile When Your Heart Is Breaking

By Frank Scheck

★★★☆☆ Dule Hill plays the title role in Colman Domingo and Patricia McGregor's play with music, exploring Nat King Cole's troubled psyche.

CRITICS' PICKS

Dead Outlaw: Rip-Roarin’ Musical Hits the Bull’s-Eye

★★★★★ David Yazbek’s brashly macabre tuner features Andrew Durand as a real-life desperado, wanted dead and alive

Just in Time Christine Jonathan Julia

Just in Time: Hello, Bobby! Darin Gets a Splashy Broadway Tribute

★★★★☆ Jonathan Groff gives a once-in-a-lifetime performance as the Grammy-winning “Beyond the Sea” singer

John Proctor Is the Villain cast

John Proctor Is the Villain: A Fearless Gen Z Look at ‘The Crucible’

★★★★★ Director Danya Taymor and a dynamite cast bring Kimberly Belflower’s marvelous new play to Broadway

Good Night, and Good Luck: George Clooney Makes Startling Broadway Bow

★★★★★ Clooney and Grant Heslov adapt their 2005 film to reflect not only the Joe McCarthy era but today

The Picture of Dorian Gray: A Masterpiece from Page to Stage

★★★★★ Succession’s Sarah Snook is brilliant as everyone in a wild adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s prophetic novel

Operation Mincemeat: A Comical Slice of World War II Lore

★★★★☆ A screwball musical from London rolls onto Broadway

Sign up for new reviews

Copyright © 2025 • New York Stage Review • All Rights Reserved.

Website Built by Digital Culture NYC.