Review: "Labyrinth" Maps the Twists and Turns of Attraction

Labyrinth

Written by Julieta Timossi

Adapted and translated by Isabel Criado and Martina Demaio

Directed by Zoé Zifer

Presented at The Newtown Stage at the Hellenic Cultural Center

25-02 Newtown Ave, Astoria, Queens, NYC

March 20-22, 2026

Martina Demaio, Juan C. Ortiz, and Isabel Criado. Photo by Ramathillai Photography.
The mythological Labyrinth has a clear monster stalking its passageways, but when it comes to the maze of human love and attraction, who is in the right and wrong becomes less cut and dried. The title of the play Labyrinth recently produced at The Newtown Stage refers to a night club in the play's New York City (perhaps the actual club Labyrinth in Manhattan), but it also functions as a metaphor for the romantic lives of its trio of characters and hints at the polyvocal structure of the narrative. Labyrinth is a new adaptation of Julieta Timossi’s Argentinian play, translated into English by Isabel Criado and Martina Demaio and featuring an all-immigrant Latinx cast. The production creates a compelling, psychologically acute representation of how a chance meeting reverberates through three lives, binding them together, if perhaps temporarily and despite whether they all know it or not.

When the lights come up in Labyrinth, they reveal Lucretia (Isabel Criado)–she is credited only as "Her," but Lucretia is eventually seen to be the name on her weekend-league soccer jersey–dancing at what turns out to be the eponymous 80s-themed dance club while we hear her thoughts in voiceover. Those thoughts turn to interest in a particular guy, The Guy in the White Shirt (Juan C. Ortiz), as he is credited, although his actual first name later becomes the subject of a running joke after Lucretia learns it. We hear the Guy's own internal monologue in voiceover, which reveals not only what he was doing before clubbing (PS5 and some drinking and molly with his friends) but also that he left his girlfriend of five years, Sofia (Martina Demaio), home when he went out. Despite this fact, before the night is out, he kisses Lucretia and leaves the club with her number. (One might see the characters' being called Her and The Guy in the White Shirt as reflecting this nascent stage of attraction, when the object of sexual interest is still so new as to be nameless.) Dancing has facilitated flirtation for centuries, and it also handily doubles as a metaphor for seduction and relationships. When the pair leave the club, the literal dancing ends, for now, but the larger, more complex metaphorical dance of the play is set in motion.

The Guy uses that number, though he says he knows it is wrong, and he and Lucretia set a date. He stands her up, and while we hear his side of that (no longer in voiceover), she stands at the rear of the stage facing the wall, a dimly lit picture of rejection. Both of them, however, end up back at Labyrinth on a subsequent night, and The Guy's restraint doesn't survive their meeting. The third time they meet there (Lucretia having gone there in the hopes of running into The Guy after he hasn't texted her back in a while), Sofia, whom Lucretia still doesn't know exists, is there as well. And Sofia doesn't meet Lucretia this time, but she will.

As these three try to find their way in relation to one another, Labyrinth gets at how attraction can seem irresistible, in control of us rather than the other way around. When Lucretia says of a soccer injury, "It was an accident. It could have happened to anyone," she could just as well be talking about attraction. The normative monogamy that generates so much guilt and conflict is, after all, an arguably patriarchal social construction, which complicates any reductive reactions to how these characters act. Similarly, omission, noncommunication, and preserving status quo of/in a relationship may not be ethical choices, but most of us can probably relate to them being temptingly easier choices. And an incident with one of Lucretia's male friends reminds that networks of desire extend beyond the archetypical triangle. The narrative's three voices speak in present tense, often to the audience, and the way that the production slides among characters' address to the audience and to each other, voiceover and speech (and even a recorded segment of Sofia riding the subway and getting off in Lucretia's Bronx neighborhood), and inside and outside really immerses spectators in these characters’ mental and emotional worlds. And Criado, Cruz, and Demaio bring humor, weight, and depth to those worlds, vividly conveying their characters' often self-aware desires and longings, insecurities and freakouts, and shifting emotions. There is no monster-slaying at the end of this Labyrinth: the production commendably avoids tidy resolution by suspending us between a moment of recognition and decision, allowing audience members to imagine possibilities for what happens next–much like one might do when someone catches their eye across a crowded dance floor.

-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards

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