Plano was first produced byClubbed Thumb as a part of their 2018 Summerworks season, followed by anoff-Broadway run atThe Connelly Theater in 2019.[3]The New Yorker described the play as a "David Lynch script performed asscrewball comedy";[4] Helen Shaw, writing inTime Out New York, wrote "It's delicious to see a playwright binding genres so confidently (body-double horror and rueful family comedy), but the real pleasure is in how muchPlano manages to bend how you perceive reality beyond the proscenium";[5] andVulture proclaimed that "Plano is a fiercely smart contemporary dream play".[6]
In October 2019, Arbery received critical acclaim for his playHeroes of the Fourth Turning, which made its world premiere off-Broadway atPlaywrights Horizons.[7] The play explores a group of young Catholic intellectuals at a college reunion. Arbery's idea for the play "crystallized" after he was dissatisfied with what he considered as shallow media coverage of Trump supporters after the2016 presidential election.[8] It was named one of the best plays of 2019 byThe New York Times[9] and one of the eight pieces of Pop Culture that Defined the Trump Era byPolitico.[10]
Heroes of the Fourth Turning went on to win a number of awards, including being named a finalist for thePulitzer Prize in Drama.[11] According to Jesse Green ofThe New York Times, this "astonishing new play", directed "with nerves of steel" byDanya Taymor, "explores the lives and ideas of conservatives with affection, understanding and deep knowledge — if not, ultimately, approval".[12]
According to Sarah Holdren ofNew York magazine, "Will Arbery's Heroes of the Fourth Turning is so frighteningly well written, it's hard to write about... Arbery's world [is] murky yet lit by lightning, lyrical and scary, brave and terribly gentle. Arbery is a virtuoso of dream language and logic. He's an unostentatious surrealist—a Magritte, not a Dali—rigorous and playful and full of love for his subjects, even when, as in Heroes, those subjects are themselves fraught with confusion, aggression, and fearful, fearsome indoctrination."[13]
Vinson Cunningham ofThe New Yorker called the play "a formally lovely, subtly horrifying play about the death rattle of ideologies and the thin line between devotion and delusion".[14]
Upon receiving theWhiting Award, the committee said "Despite their wit and charm, Will Arbery's complicated and generous plays are deadly serious... Intellectually audacious, formally sly, he has the courage to let these characters seize the stage with impassioned arguments about morality and meaning. He knows how to make ideas incandescent in time and space and his ear for the rhythms of speech is impeccable, yet he always cracks a window in naturalism, letting a shaft of eeriness in. His writing moves to the beat of multiple metronomes: the rhythm of thought, the counterpoint of competing logics, the heartbeat of human longing."[16]
^Brantley, Ben; Green, Jesse; Collins-Hughes, Laura; Soloski, Alexis; Vincentelli, Elisabeth (December 3, 2019)."Best Theater of 2019".The New York Times.Archived from the original on April 27, 2021. RetrievedApril 27, 2021.
