The Balusters Broadway Review: A Play Balancing Diversity and Satire at MTC

The Balusters, David Lindsay-Abaire’s new play, opened Tuesday at MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Its cast of 10 represents multiple races, ethnicities, genders, and sexual orientations, though some groups—including asexuals and the Inuit-Yupik-Aleuts community—remain absent.

The story centers on a Black woman (Anika Noni Rose) who buys a house in a gentrified neighborhood governed by a strict Home Owners Association (HOA). The HOA includes an Asian lesbian (Jeena Yi), a gay Black man (Carl Clemons-Hopkins), a Jewish woman (Margaret Colin), a Latino man (Ricardo Chavira), a nonbinary person (Kayli Carter), and two older white members (Marylouise Burke and Richard Thomas). A third white character, Alan Kirby (Michael Esper), boasts,

"My wife is Jewish! My son was adopted from Ethiopia! And my daughter from Colombia! My brother is gay and his partner is Bhutanese. You should come to my house at Thanksgiving, it’s like the goddamn League of Nations over there!"

The play’s title refers to balusters—short columns used in porch railings—not a family. A disabled neighbor faces HOA fines for using a historically incorrect baluster in a wheelchair-accessible ramp. Despite their differences, the HOA members unite in their insensitivity.

Lindsay-Abaire’s humor leans conservative, with jokes targeting political correctness. The Manhattan Theatre Club audience particularly enjoyed his use of "they" as a singular pronoun. Notably, the Playbill bios omit pronouns.

Director Kenny Leon balances the play’s humor, giving supporting characters enough edge to provoke discomfort without overshadowing the satire.