Introduction

The Humans is a one-act play written by American playwright Stephen Karam. The play opened Off-Broadway in 2015 before transferring to Broadway in 2016, where it became one of the most celebrated American plays of the decade. It won the Tony Award for Best Play, four Drama Desk Awards, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama — a remarkable sweep for an intimate, dialogue-driven work with a cast of just six.

Set entirely over the course of a single Thanksgiving evening in a dimly lit, somewhat unsettling basement apartment in Manhattan’s Chinatown, The Humans charts the gathering of the Blake family with a precision and emotional intelligence that drew comparisons to the great works of American domestic realism. Critics praised the play not only for its truthful characterisation and sharp, funny dialogue, but for the way Karam wraps the ordinary — a holiday dinner, family small talk, a grandmother’s failing memory — in a mounting atmosphere of existential dread.

The play has since gone on to productions across the United States, a London run at the Hampstead Theatre, regional productions worldwide, and a 2021 film adaptation written and directed by Karam himself. In 2025, it received its Japanese premiere at the New National Theater in Tokyo, cementing its place as one of the most enduring American plays of the twenty-first century.

Background & Development

Stephen Karam is a Pennsylvania-born playwright who first drew significant attention with his 2012 play Sons of the Prophet, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. With The Humans, Karam returned to the territory he knows best — the anxieties, compromises, and quiet loves of working-class American family life — but pushed his craft considerably further, weaving psychological horror conventions into domestic realism to create something genuinely new.

Karam has spoken in interviews about drawing on personal experience: his own family’s Irish-Catholic background, the economic pressures facing the middle and working class in post-2008 America, and the particular terror of watching a parent age and lose themselves. The character of Momo — Brigid’s grandmother, who suffers from severe dementia and moves through the play like a ghost in her own life — is one of the most affecting presences in recent American theatre, present on stage throughout yet almost entirely unreachable.

The play’s atmosphere of unease is carefully constructed. Karam populates the apartment with strange thumps from the floor above, flickering lights, mysterious stains that spread across the ceiling, and an oppressive darkness that resists even when the characters try to brighten the space. These horror-inflected details are never explained, functioning instead as a theatrical externalisation of the family’s collective anxiety about mortality, failure, and the future.

The play had its world premiere at the American Theater Company in Chicago, Illinois, in November 2014, directed by PJ Paparelli. Chicago Tribune critic Chris Jones described it as a “kind, warm, beautifully observed and deeply moving new play, a celebration of working-class familial imperfection and affection and a game-changing work for this gifted young playwright.” The response was strong enough to bring the production to the attention of New York producers, setting in motion its path to Off-Broadway and then Broadway.

Plot

The Humans takes place entirely in a single evening in a sparsely furnished basement duplex apartment in New York City’s Chinatown. Brigid Blake, a young aspiring composer, and her boyfriend Richard Saad, who is completing a social work degree, have just moved in together and are hosting the family for Thanksgiving dinner.

The guests are Brigid’s parents — Erik and Deirdre Blake, a working-class Irish-American couple from Scranton, Pennsylvania — her sister Aimee, a Philadelphia lawyer who is coping with ulcerative colitis and the recent end of a long-term relationship with her girlfriend, and their grandmother Fiona “Momo” Blake, who suffers from severe dementia and requires constant attention throughout the evening. As the family settles in and the meal gets underway, old patterns quickly reemerge: teasing, tension, and the particular language families develop to talk around the things they most need to say.

Erik and Deirdre are uncomfortable with Brigid living with Richard before marriage and quietly sceptical of her career ambitions as a composer. Deirdre, who works an unglamorous office job, expresses a quietly heartbreaking resentment about feeling mocked for her lack of sophistication. Richard, whose family is wealthy, tries to make polite conversation but remains somewhat outside the Blakes’ orbit; his mention of an impending inheritance trust creates an awkward undercurrent about money and security.

Underneath the surface of the evening, Erik is increasingly distracted and barely present. His discomfort builds throughout the play, and it is not until the later scenes that the truth is revealed: Erik has been fired from his job as a janitor at a Catholic school following an undisclosed incident. The family had invested their retirement savings in a lake house in Scranton, which they were forced to sell at a loss after Erik’s firing, leaving them in serious financial jeopardy.

There is also a recurring motif of bad dreams that Erik has been having — visions of a shrouded figure that seem to represent his terror of mortality and failure. At one point, Momo has a sudden and violent outburst that requires the whole family to rally around her, briefly stripping away the performance of the evening and exposing their vulnerability and their love.

In the final moments of the play, after the family has departed and Richard goes downstairs to do laundry, Erik is left alone in the apartment as the lights gradually fail. Overwhelmed by grief, fear, and the collapse of everything he has built, he is consumed by the darkness. The play ends not with resolution but with the extinguishing of the lights themselves — a moment that audiences have found both terrifying and profoundly moving.

Production History

World Premiere — Chicago (2014)

The world premiere of The Humans took place at the American Theater Company in Chicago, Illinois, in November 2014, directed by PJ Paparelli. The production received strong critical notices and established the play as a significant new work by one of American theatre’s most promising voices.

Off-Broadway — Roundabout Theatre Company (2015)

The Humans opened Off-Broadway at the Laura Pels Theatre on September 30, 2015, in previews, officially opening on October 25, 2015, in a limited run produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company, and ran until January 3, 2016. Directed by Joe Mantello, the Off-Broadway production featured Cassie Beck as Aimee, Reed Birney as Erik, Jayne Houdyshell as Deirdre, Lauren Klein as Fiona “Momo” Blake, Arian Moayed as Richard, and Sarah Steele as Brigid. The Off-Broadway run received immediate and near-universal praise, winning Obie Awards for Karam’s playwriting and for Houdyshell’s performance before the show had even transferred to Broadway.

Broadway — Helen Hayes Theatre & Schoenfeld Theatre (2016–2017)

The entire Off-Broadway cast transferred to Broadway, with The Humans opening at the Helen Hayes Theatre on February 18, 2016. The Broadway run continued until July 24, 2016, at which point the production transferred to the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre — necessitated by major renovations beginning at the Helen Hayes — re-opening on August 9, 2016. The play closed its Broadway engagement on January 15, 2017, after a run of nearly a full year.

National Tour (2017–2018)

The play embarked on a limited US national tour, starting in November 2017 at the Seattle Repertory Theatre, and concluded on July 29, 2018, at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. The tour brought the play to audiences across the country, with a new cast headed by Richard Thomas as Erik and Pamela Reed as Deirdre.

London — Hampstead Theatre (2018)

The play opened in London at the Hampstead Theatre in September 2018 and closed on October 13, 2018. The Broadway cast reprised their roles, as did director Joe Mantello. The London run attracted strong audiences but somewhat more mixed reviews, with some British critics finding the play’s American specificity to be its greatest strength and others feeling a certain distance from the material.

Regional Productions

The Pittsburgh Public Theater staged The Humans from November 9 to December 10, 2017, directed by Pamela Berlin, to admiring reviews in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland, Oregon, staged it from November 19 to December 17 of the same year. Off the Dock Players produced the play in Sandwich, New Hampshire, opening February 14, 2020. These regional productions demonstrated the play’s accessibility beyond major metropolitan markets and its resonance with audiences across the country.

International — Tokyo (2025)

The Humans received its Japanese premiere at the New National Theater in Tokyo between June 12–29, 2025, directed by Yuko Kuwahara, known for her 2022 NNT production of Lobby Hero. The production was performed in Japanese translation and featured a full Japanese cast, marking a significant milestone in the play’s international reach.

Broadway Cast

The Broadway cast of The Humans was identical to the Off-Broadway cast, with Joe Mantello returning to direct. The ensemble was widely praised as one of the finest acting companies assembled on Broadway in recent memory, with particular recognition going to Reed Birney and Jayne Houdyshell, both of whom won Tony Awards for their performances.

Creative Team:

Notable Replacements & Tour Cast

While the original Broadway production retained its Off-Broadway cast intact, the national tour that launched in 2017 brought a notably high-profile lineup to regional audiences across the United States.

The national tour cast featured television and stage veteran Richard Thomas — best known to audiences as John-Boy from The Waltons — in the pivotal role of Erik Blake. Thomas brought an additional layer of cultural resonance to the part, given his own long association with idealistic American family stories. Pamela Reed replaced Jayne Houdyshell as Deirdre for the tour, while Daisy Eagan — a Tony Award winner herself for The Secret Garden in 1991 — took on the role of Brigid.

Notably, Jayne Houdyshell reprised her role as Deirdre Blake in the 2021 film adaptation, the only original cast member to carry her performance directly from stage to screen. The film also brought in Oscar nominees and acclaimed performers including Richard Jenkins, Amy Schumer, Beanie Feldstein, Steven Yeun, and June Squibb, giving the material an extraordinary cinematic ensemble.

Critical Reception

The Humans was one of the most unanimously praised Broadway openings in recent memory. Critics pointed to the rarity of a play that could simultaneously function as a sharply observed comedy of family manners and a genuinely unsettling work of psychological horror — and do both without sacrificing the other.

In his review of the Broadway production in The New York Times, Charles Isherwood called it the “finest new play of the Broadway season so far” and praised the cast, direction, and the set as perfectly capturing “the unsettled atmosphere the writing so deftly establishes.”

The Pulitzer Prize Drama committee, in naming The Humans a finalist, described it as a “profoundly affecting drama that sketches the psychological and emotional contours of an average American family.”

Critics consistently highlighted the extraordinary ensemble work, with particular praise for Reed Birney’s Erik — a man coming apart at the seams while trying desperately to hold himself together — and Jayne Houdyshell’s Deirdre, a performance of extraordinary warmth, humor, and heartbreak. Arian Moayed’s Richard provided crucial comic relief and a necessary outsider’s perspective, while Lauren Klein’s wordless, physically demanding performance as Momo was widely described as haunting.

David Zinn’s scenic design — a two-floor apartment rendered in cross-section, with the floors above and below visible — received particular praise for the way it made the space feel both cramped and oddly infinite. Justin Townsend’s lighting design was also singled out, creating an atmosphere in which the gradual dimming of the apartment felt almost imperceptibly threatening. Fitz Patton’s sound design — the thumps from above, the hum of the building — was considered integral to the play’s emotional texture.

Not all responses were uniformly celebratory. The London Hampstead Theatre production received somewhat more divided notices, with Guardian critic Michael Billington finding the play’s horror elements to be at odds with its domestic realism. This minority view, however, was largely overwhelmed by the consensus that The Humans represented a landmark achievement in American playwriting.

Awards & Nominations

Off-Broadway (2015–2016)

Broadway (2016)

Film Adaptation (2021)

A feature film adaptation of The Humans was written and directed by Stephen Karam himself, with production beginning in September 2019. The film was released in November 2021, distributed by A24 — the studio that had become synonymous with elevated, formally ambitious American drama.

The film cast is one of the most impressive assembled for any A24 production: Richard Jenkins as Erik Blake, Jayne Houdyshell reprising her stage role as Deirdre, Amy Schumer as Aimee, Beanie Feldstein as Brigid, Steven Yeun as Richard, and June Squibb as Momo. Houdyshell’s presence bridged stage and screen, with her performance essentially the emotional through-line connecting the two versions of the work.

Karam’s adaptation expanded on the play’s horror elements, using the grammar of cinema — close-ups, sound design, the camera’s ability to lurk and observe — to deepen the sense of dread that the stage version created through atmosphere and suggestion. The film was received warmly by critics, with praise for its faithfulness to the play’s spirit and its bold formal choices, though some reviewers felt that certain elements of the stage experience — particularly the claustrophobic shared space between audience and performers — could not be fully replicated on screen.

Houdyshell received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for her performance, and the film continues to introduce new audiences to Karam’s extraordinary work.

Frequently Asked Questions