What Did You Expect?

A mirror of our frightened, fallible selves at this very fraught moment in American history… WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? is the second work in the second cycle of plays by Mr Nelson that have quietly emerged as a sui generis triumph of civic theater… [They] inhabit the here and now with an unobtrusive thoroughness I’ve never encountered elsewhere in the theater.

Ben Brantley, The New York Times

By exploring the underwater part of the iceberg whose visible tip is politics, [Nelson] is challenging the idea of what political theater can be.

Jesse Green, New York Magazine

As close to a perfect illusion as theatre can get…

Max McGuinness, Financial Times

The quiet brilliance of Nelson’s extraordinary project…

Linda Winer, Newsday

The effect is akin to eavesdropping on a private family conversation.

Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter