Review: “Waiting for C-Row” Swaps Bowler Hats for Stiletto Heels

Waiting for C-Row

Written and directed by Aaron J. Stewart

Presented at Teatro LATEA

107 Suffolk Street, Manhattan, NYC

January 27-31, 2026

Ndeye Daro Niang and Precious Omigie

Two people wait on a deserted stretch for a third, who has power over their lives. Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Aaron J. Stewart’s Waiting for C-Row share this basic situation, the latter drawing inspiration from the former while transposing the action to a less abstract, more contemporary setting. In place of Godot’s country lane, Waiting for C-Row unfolds on an urban street abutting the water; in place of a leafless tree, a single lamppost rises from center stage, simultaneously Godot’s tree and moon; and rather than a pair of everyman tramps, our protagonists are a pair of female sex workers. Having begun life as a ten-minute play and later developed and adapted into a short film in 2021, Waiting for C-Row made its premiere this January as a new, full-length one-act play at New York Theater Festival’s 2025/2026 Winter Festival in an engrossing production that, like the play to which it pays homage, finds comedy and even a certain kind of hope amidst the tragic tenor of its characters’ existences.

The first of those characters whom the audience meets is teenager Jenna (Precious Omigie), lying prone on a bench—the only other piece of stage furniture aside from the lamppost—and crying. With the sound of lapping water audible, Jenna also sings a bit of Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come,” in which lyrics such as “It’s been too hard living / But I’m afraid to die” hint at Beckettian existential anxiety at the same time that they lay the thematic foundation for what’s to come. It’s not long until a second woman, Candy (Ndeye Daro Niang), arrives on the scene. Unlike Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon, these two do not already know each other, and their initial interactions are fractious, and often funny. It turns out, however, that both women are sex workers, and more surprisingly, both work for the same pimp, C-Row (Aaron J. Stewart), the man for whom Candy is waiting. Unlike the older and more experienced Candy, however, Jenna is not a good earner, putting her in trouble with C-Row, and as the women’s conversation shifts away from competition and insults, they begin to share their struggles, aspirations, and, at one point, some weed with one another, all of which softens Candy’s attitude towards Jenna and prompts Jenna to wonder why they can’t both change their lives, maybe together. But when C-Row does arrive, will Candy’s attempt to help Jenna backfire, and how will the women respond if it does?

The women’s conversations reveal contrasting worldviews: Candy sees sex work as her life and focuses on survival, while Jenna believes that sex work is a temporary phase and holds onto the idea that love is the most important thing, being seen, as she puts it, as a person and not a machine (a problem in all capitalist labor systems, not just sex work). Candy sees herself—however short-sightedly—as able to use her sexuality to exert some degree of control over men, whom she sees as weak, while Jenna still hopes to find true love. Their clashing ways of seeing themselves and the world intersect with the fluctuating power differentials that the play considers: between different genders, ages, and even skin tones (Jenna is Black, while some of the other sex workers she lives with are white, but she is also lighter-skinned than Candy, leading them to joke about who the police would shoot on a dark night). Omigie and Niang create an impressively natural rapport between Jenna and Candy, whether the duo are squabbling, teasing, or bonding. Jenna ending up with her shoes off at one stage works as both a nice character detail and a subtle nod to Godot (with symbolic resonance in both cases), and a stretch in which Candy tries to help Jenna with work strategies through role playing sees the actors deliver a very funny burlesque of sex worker and client, as well as of a certain type of performance of masculinity and femininity. As C-Row, Stewart matches their nuanced, energetic performances, exuding a dangerous mix of cunning, anger, and self-regard. In the end, Waiting for C-Row affords Jenna and Candy more potential for agency than Beckett allows his tramps, but how much of an improvement that is for the women is decidedly thrown into question in the play’s closing moments and in Omigie’s unsettled mixture of laughter and tears—a fitting final image for a play that will leave its audiences feeling much the same way.

-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards