Today At The Clinton Street Theater

Written by Annie Baker.

The play takes place in a small town in Vermont. Two thirtyish men, Jasper and KJ, meet to discuss music and poetry in an alley behind a coffee shop. They discuss their band, which was called (among many things) The Aliens. KJ has dropped out of college and Jasper has not finished high school, but is writing a novel. When Evan, a high school student who works at the coffee shop arrives, the men decide to teach him everything they know.

Charles Isherwood, in his review for The New York Times, wrote that The Aliens is "a gentle and extraordinarily beautiful new play". He noted "Ms. Baker may just have the subtlest way with exposition of anyone writing for the theater today. Through the small details and telling asides we learn the fundamentals of this friendship, founded on a mutual sense of generalized alienation. At the risk of appearing hyperbolic, I’ll go so far as to say there is something distinctly Chekhovian in the way her writing accrues weight and meaning simply through compassionate, truthful observation... her subjects in 'The Aliens' are mighty indeed: no less than love and death, and how these two facets of human existence are woven into the fabric of life, the first sometimes unacknowledged or undivulged, the second ineluctable and often unforeseen. To say any more would be unfair, for the second act of this seemingly slight play takes a turn that is quietly devastating."