In Natalie Margolin’s All Nighter, Darcie (Kristine Frøseth), Lizzy (Havana Rose Liu), Tessa (Alyah Chanelle Scott), and Jacqueline (Kathryn Gallagher) room together on an unnamed college campus. They’re pulling the 2014 NoDoz escapade at a lounge in hopes of more properly preparing for their final graduation grind.
Given that brief description, a review reader might jump to the conclusion that the patrons Margolin is immediately aiming for are young women about to face such a night or are currently going through it or have endured it in the not-too-distant past.
Not a bad assumption: The audience with which I watched the play boasted as much as an eighty percent crowd matching that description. And did that eighty percent hark to it with constantly expressed delight!
It could also be assumed that anyone not playwright Margolin’s target spectators would likely regard the proceedings as if observing them through the wrong end of an attenuated stages-of-life telescope.
Maybe not. As the girls—at one point two of them wonder if they look like adults—go through their busy interactions, this commentator, an adult male for some time, suddenly recalled high school and college friends in their animated tête-à-têtes. I was overhearing them again. I was relating.
But what in particular was I hearing from this relatively current four, as well as obstreperous and gaudily dressed latecomer Wilma (Julia Lester)? There definitely were some subjects updated from back in my day: such as the openly expressed lesbian crush Jacqueline has on the unseen but across the lounge Claire, such as the availability and use of Adderall.
More timeless, Lizzy is all agog about a pizza she made from scratch that the others devoured, leaving nothing for her the next morning. Darcie’s suspects her boyfriend is seeing someone else, this after having an animated mobile phone chat with him. The college seniors sing snatches of popular songs. They show familiarity with white wines.
To wit or not wit, the early expository banter is shallow in outlining the characters’ interests, an introductory portrait that Margolin most likely doesn’t want to remain. (How autobiographical is this work, if at all?) Before too long, she inserts exchanges and references that make it clear Darcie and pals are not only small-talk fountains but are academically and personally astute.
She also realizes she must do more than supply sequences in which she has them dig deeper into their relationships as a group or in isolated combos. (Lighting designer Ben Stanton meets his challenges.) For instance, Lizzy and Jacqueline are revealed as sharing a bitterly combative past that’s supposedly been resolved but maybe hasn’t been.
Still, Margolin also senses that a series of ups and downs doesn’t ultimately constitute a satisfying dramatic experience. As her intermissionless 90-minutes head towards an end, she locates a stakes-raiser. When Tessa first arrives, she’s worried about her credit card. She can’t find it. Though she doesn’t unwaveringly focus on the loss, she often returns to it.
The mystery thickens when, noticing withdrawals on the missing card, she suspects that someone on campus is using it. For levity, Margolin has Wilma declare she’ll play detective and trap the culprit. Progress is made. How far it extends, though, gets into serious All Nighter spoiler territory and thereby won’t even be hinted at.
Nonetheless, it’s fair to report that as the final sequences unfold, they begin to feel less than convincing, more a contrivance. Furthermore, for some reason, she’s also decided to leave the exact nature of what she’s describing up in the air. The unsatisfactory outcome is a fade signaling it’s the patrons who must suss out which of the possible truths the actual truth is.
Rather than go on, it makes more sense to report that through the serious rift, Margolin exposes her thematic concern: female friendships. Her attitude towards them as possibly more tenuous, more superficial than friends maintain they are, is a worthy objective.
Margolin is lucky in keen-eyed director Jaki Bradley and cast, each of whom is thoughtfully and appropriately attired (Michell J. Li, the costumer). Determinedly outrageous Wilma is even supplied a second eye-stunner. The playwright having provided each actor with plenty to draw attention to themselves, Frøseth, Liu, Scott, Gallagher, and Lester respond admirably, easily filling Wilson Chin’s perhaps more spacious than necessary luxurious set with their activities. (Whatever campus this is has gobs of money to toss around.)
At the end of the day, then—or at the end of the all-nighter—Margolin does more than tolerably well with her loving and contentious friends.
All Nighter opened March 9, 2025, at the MCC Theater Space and runs through May 18. Tickets and information: allnighterplay.com
