Review: "benevolent" Sorts Through Some of the Dirty Laundry of America's Past
benevolent Written by Sophie McIntosh Directed by Nina Goodheart Presented by Good Apples Collective at IATI Theater 64 East 4th Street, Manhattan, NYC August 14-September 5, 2026 Chani Reese, Rachel Ravel, Livvy Marcus, and Mia Fowler. Photo by Nina Goodheart. Forcing unruly women into the custody of institutions such as jails, asylums, workhouses, and laundries has historically been a popular mechanism of (patriarchal, capitalist) social control, and it remains, albeit in more circumscribed form, an available lever of power today (e.g., the continued criminalization of sex workers). benevolent , a new play from Sophie McIntosh, takes audiences inside one such institution, at a time when there were substantially more avenues to confinement within its walls. Directed by Nina Goodheart, co-founder with McIntosh of Good Apples Collective, the perfectly paced and fittingly claustrophobic benevolent unfolds entirely in the basement of the "Inwood Benevolent Home," a fictional c...