Pike St. is the highly praised sixth play by New Yorker Nilaja Sun, playwright of the solo show No Child…. In it, a Lower East Side family comes vividly to life. As a storm approaches, Evelyn is trying to assure the safety of her teenage daughter, Candi, whose unidentified illness has immobilized her. Her care has forced Evelyn to quit her job as a subway conductor, though she must help support both her father and her brother, who has returned to New York from Afghanistan and suffers from PTSD.
Just behind the grace and humor with which Evelyn manages to hold together her own life and those of the people who depend on her is the constant threat of both natural and man-made disasters. Sun’s deeply affecting portrait of a day in the life of a neighborhood is a reminder that chance works abruptly and inequitably.
