The reviews are in for Two Girls, Eliya Smith’s verbatim play, created with The Goat Exchange, which opened at the Cherry Lane Theatre on October 18 in repertory with Milo Cramer’s School Pictures. Smith has never watched the notorious 2007 shock video at its center, so she asked the men she knows to describe it from memory, and Chloe Claudel and Juliana Sass trade roles to perform those interviews word for word, with Claudel co-directing alongside Mitchell Polonsky. The critics agree it is a good deal more thoughtful than its subject suggests, and that it turns into a play about women’s bodies; they divide over whether the last stretch lands.
The verdict: five reviews in so far, and only The Front Row Center gives a score, 4.5 out of 5. TheaterMania and The Front Row Center are the warmest, and most of the critics credit Chloe Claudel and Juliana Sass with pulling irony and feeling out of the transcripts. Exeunt NYC and New York Theatre Guide admire the turn toward the body in the final third but find it unfinished, and the public part of The New York Times’ double review calls the play nauseating.
What are critics saying about Two Girls?
TheaterMania
"Two Girls, an Interrogation of a Memory of a Brazilian Porno"
Reviewer: Dan Rubins
Rubins finds the interviews going deeper than expected, into nostalgia and the tangle of disgust and desire the video stood for, and he praises Juliana Sass as an especially funny quick-change caricaturist.
"…though side effects may include occasional queasiness, it’s surprisingly thoughtful."
He thinks the final turn, toward stories about women’s bodies that are not sexual, almost sticks the landing, and comes away convinced that Smith is a playwright on the rise.
The Front Row Center
Reviewer: Katarina La Poll · 4.5 out of 5
La Poll opens with her own memory of the video doing the rounds and calls Smith ingenious for treating it as a generation-defining subject worth research. She describes Claudel and Sass as a natural duo, and the evening as a fireside chat with curious, funny friends.
"What an inventive and delightful show this was."
She also credits Polonsky’s quirky soundscape and the simple set and lighting by Forest Entsminger and Isabella Byrd.
Exeunt NYC
"A tricky nugget of a verbatim play"
Reviewer: Loren Noveck
Noveck reads the video as a pretext for more personal questions about disgust and the body, and is struck by how Smith writes herself into a form that usually keeps its author out of sight. She notes that the directors slow everything down, the opposite of the team’s frantic Dad Don’t Read This.
"Two Girls feels unsettled, trailing off into its ambiguous ending, but it’s unsettling all the same."
Her reservation is a late device that she finds works more on the mind than the heart, and punctures the piece’s tense intimacy.
New York Theatre Guide
"a fresh look at an infamous online video"
Reviewer: Allison Considine
Considine likens the evening to a live reaction video, with the audience gasping and laughing at the recollections, and finds Chloe Claudel particularly affecting as one nervous interviewee.
"But Two Girls more interestingly evolves into a moving meditation on what it means to inhabit a body."
She wishes Smith had turned the spotlight more squarely on her own experience, and concludes that the play finds new layers in its subject without yet knowing what to do with them.
Read Allison Considine’s full review at New York Theatre Guide
Also reviewed by: The New York Times (Helen Shaw, "In ‘School Pictures’ and ‘Two Girls,’ the Tweens Are Not All Right"), a joint review of both Cherry Lane one-acts. Its opening calls Two Girls "a nauseating account of the things we absorb as kids"; the section on the play sits behind the paywall.
For more from the New York critics, read our roundups for Copperfield! The New Musical at The Duke on 42nd Street and Lincoln in the Bardo at the Metropolitan Opera.
Two Girls runs in repertory with School Pictures at the Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce Street, through November 29, 2026. The running time is one hour, with no intermission. Production photo courtesy of Cherry Lane Theatre.
