Benedict Lombe's Olivier Award-nominated romance is making its North American premiere at Cherry Lane Theatre. Directed by Lynette Linton and starring Heather Agyepong and Daniel Ezra, this intimate two-hander follows Dre and Des, two young, gifted Black people whose lives take very different paths after falling for each other. He stayed. She left. Now, years later, they're back in each other's orbit, bringing old memories, new secrets and plenty of emotional baggage with them.

Critically acclaimed and one of New York's must-see shows - this is a romance with plenty to say about growing up and leaving home. Here's what critics are saying about Shifters...

BOOK TICKETS

Shifters CrItic Reviews

"Lynette Linton has been the play's director of record from its inception and she has ably fostered its development from London to the intimate Cherry Lane where it's making its North American premiere. Wisely, she's kept the play very much the thing with a bare-bones scenic design. Only the lights stand out as jagged overhead tubes that color and flicker based on the mood and tone of each scene. Music has a prominent role to play in the production, evoking the characters' emotional evolution. Credit composer and Soundscape designer Xana for adding yet another dimension to the play's inescapable power. Shifters may be a very small play but it strikes a symphony of resonant chords."
- New York Stage Review

"When Des, an aspiring visual artist, presents Dre with a portrait she has painted of him, he turns to us and says: "It took your breath away." He doesn't tell her that; he tells us. This didn't just seem mannered; it felt almost like the playwright's diss on Daniel Ezra, the British actor who is best known on this side of the Atlantic as the football star Spencer James in the TV series "All American." He and Heather Agyepong don't always need the playwright's words to tell us how they're feeling. They're breathtaking enough as actors for us to know it."
- Newyorktheater.me

"There's a comforting richness to the characters, a sense of their deep roots in both their adjacent but different Black immigrant communities (Dre's Nigerian and Des's Congolese) and in their chosen lives: Dre as the chef/owner of a local restaurant, Des as an artist whose father still doesn't understand what she does. And the grounded, open-hearted performances, under Linton's direction, make us lean in to learn more, to know these people better. (I'd trade some of the musing about the nature of time and memory for more worldbuilding around their adult lives.)"
- Exuent NYC

"Shifters is not jumping timelines, but it is asking whether the romantic idea of "soulmates"the one Des and Dre's youthful courtship is flashing with a neon signis just a nice story that we can rearrange and reinterpret at will. Des suspects as much, but is that just her cynicism talking? Dre believes in...*Destiny...*but is that just a symptom of his naivete? Lombe makes space for either alternative in this aerial view of intimacy. But don't worry. Neither one makes a great love any less great."
- Theatermania

"The production, imported from London's Bush Theatre, is both extremely delicate and brutally honest in its consideration of these would-be lovers and their unresolvable situation. Des tries to comfort herself with a magazine article about "the myth of first love," but who is she kidding? She and Dre share a connection that never has, never could, be fully satisfied. But, without it, their lives would be markedly different and, most likely, much, much poorer. It's a puzzle that one can spend a lifetime trying to parse."
- Lighting & Sound America

"Shifters is not your typical play - the director and the playwright built something rare together."
- The Knockturnal

"SHIFTERS at the Theatre is everything magical about live theater and the human imagination."
- Beautynewnyofficial