[1] The Chicago production featured Kevin Anderson as Kenny, Laurie Metcalf as Mary, Kate Arrington as Sharon, Ian Barford as Ben and Robert Breuler as Frank.
[1] Although Detroit was originally expected to transfer to Broadway in Fall 2011,[4] the play received its New York premiere Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in 2012.
[5] The play opened on September 18, 2012, after previews from August 24, with a cast that featured David Schwimmer, Amy Ryan and John Cullum, directed by Anne Kauffman.
[15] Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune wrote of the show: "Sure, D’Amour ultimately does not delve as deep as one might wish into the implications of the situation she so richly and vividly realizes.
But D’Amour has penned a very provocative snapshot of the perilous moment ... that sense of dislocation is exquisitely embodied in the work of Laurie Metcalf, an actress who long has understood the precarious dreams of the lower-middle class.
"[17] Mary Shen Barnidge of the Windy City Times observed, "Despite the serious questions it raises, D'Amour's premise has all the makings of a situation comedy.
There's even a drunk scene—that standby of 1950s farce—along with extended recitations of heavily-symbolic dreams and the bizarre street names characteristic of open-box-add-water subdivisions to escalate the atmosphere of dislocation.
But, although D'Amour registers the solitude and despair of the innercity suburbs, she only briefly relates that to the broader picture of American decline and consigns a lecture on the loss of communal values to an awkward coda.
But there's a lovely looseness, rhythm and exhilaration to D'Amour's writing, especially in the tender, misguided relationship between the two women, who take off for a weekend camping in the woods....but only make it as far as the gas station.
It is most original when it advances on Betty Friedan in its wry, acute portrait of contemporary suburban women living dangerously, on the tightrope between boredom and self-destruction.