HOW LOW CAN YOU GO?

Lowcountry, Abby Rosebrock’s new play premiering at Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater, arrives with the promise of plunging into the “messy, tangled web of love and identity in the digital age,” but not even a ripple disturbs the surface. Though entrusted to the direction of Jo Bonney, the play is a tepid romantic comedy with two curiously drawn characters lost in a sea of uninspired dialogue.

We are in a South Carolina’s apartment where David, played by Babak Tafti, is nervously preparing for a Tinder date while on the phone with his sponsor. It’s a long beginning that tries to tell us as much as possible of the character’s past; even with scandalous details, it’s tedious. David is a disgraced high-school teacher fresh out of an ankle bracelet because he exchanged sexually explicit photos with one of his students who was only 17. Consequentially, he lost his wife, his home, his job, and he is fighting for visitation rights to see his son because access hangs on his sobriety and sexual restraint. The SAA sponsor on speaker (Keith Kupferer) sounds harsh and oppressive while David can’t wait to get off the phone to welcome his Tinder date.

Enter Tally (Jodi Balfour), a former aspiring actress who just moved from Los Angeles back to her hometown to help her ailing father. Her motives are hard to pin down but she wants to have sex with David at all costs. There’s little genuine chemistry between them; Balfour plays the sexually assertive woman with determination, her character focused on seduction, justifying everything he says just to get laid. Tafti’s David is stiff with discomfort, exuding the awkwardness of a man unused to intimacy. At one point David explains he can’t have sex not due to lack of attraction but a sudden fear of losing his child, which makes no sense since he set up the date and seemed eager to see Tally.

As his trauma unfolds, her desire intensifies and his fades. We never understand his reasons for the inappropriate relationship with the student. In his confused thinking, he cannot find ways to excuse his actions but Tally does. She justifies him and then launches into impassioned rants about justice and politics. Her monologues, light in form yet heavy with rhetoric, don’t land, and David’s hesitant mumbling does little to lift the energy. The characters are written as burdened with pain but that pain never quite reaches the surface.

Balfour gives everything to the role but never quite connects with Tafti, who stays emotionally remote inside his world. Kupferer, meanwhile, is reduced to brute voice and force. If the aim was to toss three wildly different energies into one dramatic pot, it didn’t come together. I won’t spoil the ending, as usual, although it’s enough to say that if the story up to that point fails to move, then no finale, no justification, no matter how unexpected, is going to fix that.

With Arnulfo Maldonado’s set, Sarah Laux’s costumes, Heather Gilbert’s lighting, and John Gromada’s sound design, the production nails the story’s mood: a rural town and two lives full of hidden tension. Unfortunately, the writing struggles to find a natural rhythm, and the characters lack the depth needed to bring the story to life. Lowcountry feels stuck between being a character-focused comedy and a plot-driven dramedy, without fully committing to either. Because of that, it’s hard to stay engaged.

photos by Ahron R. Foster

Lowcountry
Atlantic Theater Company
Linda Gross Theater, 336 W. 20th Street
Tues, Thurs & Sun at 7; Wed, Fri & Sat at 8pm, Sat & Sun at 2
ends on July 13, 2025
for tickets (beginning at $85), call 646.452.2220 or visit Atlantic