The reviews are in for The Kick Inside, the exquisite-corpse experiment conceived and directed by Nicolás Noreña for his company The Million Underscores, which opened on Friday, October 23, at HERE Arts Center. Thirteen New York writers, among them Penny Arcade, John Jesurun, Nazareth Hassan and the late Richard Foreman, each supplied a scene, and Tatyana Kot's Alenka, a woman grown weary of ordinary language, is the thread that runs through them. The critics part company on whether the pieces ever add up: one calls it theater at its best, one went home unconvinced, and the others admire the invention while noting how loosely it holds together. Nearly all of them single out Normandy Sherwood's shape-shifting set and Marija Kovačević's live Foley.
The verdict: five reviews in, and only one of them publishes a score: The Front Row Center gives the show 95 percent, or 4.75 out of 5, and calls it theater at its absolute best. At the other end, This Week in New York found the evening more confounding than surreal. Between them, Exeunt NYC, TheaterScene and Off Off Online all prize the design and the commitment of the eight-strong ensemble while noting how little holds the dozen-plus scenes together. Three critics also complain that too much of the action happens at floor level, out of sight of much of the house. The scenes named most often as the best are Jess Barbagallo's "The Apartment," John Jesurun's "The Bus Stop" and Nazareth Hassan's "The Locksmith."
What are critics saying about The Kick Inside?
The Front Row Center
"This is live theater at its absolute best."
Reviewer: Holli Harms · 4.75 out of 5
Harms is the warmest voice here. She frames the piece as one for the curious rather than for anyone wanting a tidy plot, and insists that its strangeness is deliberate rather than strangeness for its own sake.
"The Kick Inside is a remarkable, thought-provoking theatrical artwork."
She admires the choreography, the walls, ceilings and curtains that keep remaking the stage, the grace of the performers and the live music and Foley of Marija Kovačević.
Exeunt NYC
"An exquisite corpse that veers too far to the side of random chance"
Reviewer: Loren Noveck
Noveck traces the evening's deliberate excess back to Richard Foreman, whose own scene sits at its center, and finds most of the writing opaque, sometimes intriguingly and often less so.
"As a thing whose pieces cohere into a larger whole, it has its frustrations."
She credits Normandy Sherwood's puzzle-box set and the live Foley, and picks out the Barbagallo, Jesurun and Hassan scenes as the ones that work, but would have liked more shaping once the chance elements were in place.
TheaterScene
"An intriguing experiment in theatrical surrealism … ultimately undone by its own fragmented execution"
Reviewer: Tony Marinelli
Marinelli grants the show every ingredient of an exciting experiment but argues that it introduces its ideas about language without ever connecting them, leaving the audience to do the work.
"The production’s visual imagination is often more persuasive than its writing."
He enjoys the same three scenes Exeunt does, credits the ensemble's commitment and Kovačević's Foley, and faults a set that is noisy, flimsy and hard to see when the action drops to the floor.
This Week in New York
"Love Language"
Reviewer: Mark Rifkin
Rifkin, who says he usually welcomes the weird, is the sternest critic of the five. He finds the dialogue more baffling than surreal and the scenes too random ever to connect, with an audience around him that was struggling to follow.
"There might be others who feel it for The Kick Inside, but it was not true love for me."
A few scenes, at the bus stop and the dry cleaners, land for him, but he too notes how much of the staging is lost at floor level.
Off Off Online
"a time capsule, catapulting its audiences back to the heyday of experimental theater"
Reviewer: Nicole Colbert
Colbert reads the show as a return trip to the downtown avant-garde of the 1960s and '70s, steered by Noreña with a steady hand, and singles out Penny Arcade's diner scene as particularly funny.
"Normandy Sherwood’s set and costume designs take on a life of their own."
She praises Tatyana Kot's Alenka and a company that commits fully to material with little dramatic structure, and advises audiences to let go of expectations and enjoy the ride.
Production photographs by Jose Miranda.
For more of what the New York critics have been saying this fall, read our roundup for I Became We at Atlantic Theater Company.
The Kick Inside runs at HERE Arts Center, 145 Sixth Avenue, through Saturday, November 7, 2026, with performances Tuesday through Saturday at 8:30 p.m. The running time is 90 minutes with no intermission.
