There is a considerable array of talent on stage at Greenwich House Theater, where Eliya Smith’s Dad Don’t Read This has transferred for a three-week run following its May premiere at St. Luke’s.
Heading that array is the cast of four. The proceedings start with a jumble of recorded pre-show noise that is mostly impossible to decipher, although it somehow distills into Julie Andrews singing about the merry month of May. (If you don’t recognize that as coming from Camelot, no mind; playwright Smith has ulterior motives, though the target audience for Dad Don’t Read This is likely unfamiliar with Lerner, Loewe, Guinevere, and maybe even Julie Andrews.)
The house lights go down and there is an overlong wait, as if the stage manager has neglected to call a cue. But no; a barely visible actor slowly makes her way down the side aisle in near darkness, stands against the wall, and races through the opening lines:
dad don’t read this… if you’re reading this page it means you started to read it even though you weren’t supposed to… it’s just invasive of you to read so stop please… and before you ask no i don’t want to go on a walk with you
Smith moves the actor to her onstage bedroom, where she is joined by three friends for a sleepover preceded by a seemingly endless computer session with their sims characters. Does it matter if you’re so fin de siècle that you never heard of sims? Well, the uninitiated can glean what they are talking about, after a time. (I at first thought that this 16-year-old was yearning to live in “the thin world,” which in context did make sense.)
This ringleader is Mal (Amalia Yoo), the center of a quartet of suburban Ohio teens. Yoo might be remembered from John Proctor Is the Villain, in which she played the prim pastor’s daughter and won herself a Drama Desk Award; if she was very good then, she is even better now in drawing the confused, complex and incompletely formed Mal. Her friends, who become estranged over the course of the play, include Noelle (Renée-Nicole Powell, who was prominent in Smith’s 2025 play, Grief Camp), Lida (Kayta Thomas) and Sophie (Sophie Rossman). If these friends are subsidiary, the actors are not; each and every one does stunningly well.
The play is a melange of small talk, gossip, and sims for a third of its 90-odd minutes, until real life—in the form of a dangerous encounter with someone else’s dad—shakes up the characters and most of the audience as well. From there, reality intrudes. One of the girls is apparently the victim of abuse. Or maybe two. One is suicidal, or maybe two; one drowns her fears in alcohol, another wonders why she made a special sims neighborhood where her imaginary sims are all gay.
Smith floats fears, neuroses, and real-life obstacles amongst the 16-year-olds, most of it out of focus. At a couple of places, they manage to dance away their fears: there is some frenetically exciting dancing here, especially from Rossman (who might well be prepping to one day play Michael Bennett’s Cassie) and Thomas (whose awkwardly athletic maneuverings include an astonishing dive onto a bean bag stool, and I mean astonishing).
Director Chloe Claudel harnesses the energy, makes good use of her hard-working cast, and provides some interesting moments including the movement and dance sections (with choreography by Lena Engelstein) and some fine visuals including scenes placed against the upstage wall of lights (with lighting design by Abigail Sage and Finn Bamber). You might also note that director Claudel is listed as the sole understudy for the entire cast, which is something I’ve not seen before.
Contemporary theatergoers are privileged to have encountered three exceptional plays in this specific genre over the past ten years: Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves, Clare Barron’s Dance Nation, and Kimberly Belflower’s John Proctor Is the Villain. Is Dad Don’t Read This a worthy addition? Not quite, alas. Smith overstocks the play with many issues, her characters are (realistically) mixed up and unclear. This is convincing and moving, yes; but what, in the end, is she trying to impart to the audience?
You’ll likely leave Barrow Street impressed by what you’ve seen and surely by the performers. But maybe with only a hazy understanding of what the playwright intended (which was certainly not the case with the more fully realized Wolves, Dance Nation, and John Proctor). That said, Dad Don’t Read This is highly entertaining and Smith impresses as a playwright ready to break through.
As for me, I still don’t understand all that talk about the Julie Andrews Broadway sex playlist. But then, I’m a dad.
Dad Don’t Read This opened June 23, 2026, at the Greenwich House Theater and runs through July 11. Tickets and information: daddontreadthis.com
