Bryant-Merer on WNYc, and all this week during our membership drive

we're ending the show each day with a guide to some can't miss

cultural happenings and today theater on and off Broadway

and so we're joined by this by Vincent Cunningham,

staff writer and theater critic for the New Yorker and co-host of their new

podcast Critics at Large. Vincent, welcome to WNYC.

Ryan, it's such a pleasure to be done with you. at large. Vincent welcome to WNYC.

Brian, it's such a pleasure to be done with you. Thank you so much. Let's start with a couple of the plays you've reviewed for the New Yorker that opened this fall starting with

Pearly victorious a non-Confederate romp through the cotton patch.

This dates from the early 60s the storyline and stars Leslie Odom Jr. of Hamilton

fame among other things.

Is this a can't miss theatrical event?

First of all, I love that phrase. It is in fact a can't miss

the theatrical event. It sort of tells the story of these people, these black people who work as sort of

of sharecroppers on land on which they used to be enslaved.

And it's sort of a, even though that sounds very heavy,

it's kind of a comic romp through the life

of this preacher named Pearl Lee victorious,

who is played by Leslie Odom Jr.

and his sort of almost race hustler like attempt to free his people

and get their like sort of ancestral church back.

The great Kenny Leon directed this. How tricky is it to

...