Review: Cold War Choir Practice Wants Us to Remember the ’80s

Ronald Reagan and American economic dynamism won the Cold War—at least according to a popular conception of history. It is, of course, equally plausible that Reagan and his successor, George H.W. Bush, happened to be in office when a brittle empire misruled by a blinkered gerontocracy finally snapped into pieces (in politics as in showbiz, timing is everything). Either way, we’ve lived with this narrative of victory and its consequences ever since.

Ro Reddick offers the off-Broadway audience a chance to reflect on the twilight years of the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union in her hilarious, insightful, and surprisingly action-packed new play Cold War Choir Practice, now appearing at MCC Theater in a co-production with Clubbed Thumb and Page 73. In many ways, these were the formative years for the world of today, just as they were for our protagonist.

Christmas 1987 approaches and 10-year-old Meek (Alana Raquel Bowers) thinks obsessively about nuclear annihilation. It’s not her fault. She’s in a youth choir called the Seedlings of Peace, which performs numbers like “Milkshake for Peace” with lyrics like “No one has to die / Milkshake for a Soviet and I.” She also has a Soviet pen pal in whom she confides, “A kid from choir said I don’t have to worry about getting bombed in my neighborhood because only Black people live there and they always bomb important people first.” But … better safe than singed.

“I want a Pound Puppy, a Speak + Spell, and a nuclear radiation detector,” she tells her father, Smooch (Will Cobbs). A former Black Panther and the proprietor of a Syracuse roller rink, Smooch is skeptical of the official government line on anything, and he knows damn well they don’t have money for a radiation detector.

Smooch’s brother, Clay (Andy Lucien), also thinks regularly about nuclear war. Reagan’s deputy national security advisor (and therefore one of the most prominent Black Republicans in the country), he is working on a sensitive disarmament treaty with the USSR. At the same time, his wife, Virgie (Crystal Finn), has recently returned in a state of shock after attending a productivity workshop run by a shadowy group called Wellspring. Her mental breakdown has come at a terrible time as they return to Syracuse to visit Smooch, Meek, and grandma Puddin (Lizan Mitchell) for the holidays.

Like an episode of The Americans written by Tyler Perry, Cold War Choir Practice uses the familiar building blocks of middle-class Black life to create a wild tale of international intrigue. We never quite know where Reddick is going, but we’re there for the ride. There is so much play in this play.

A big part of that is the choir, three women dressed in communist propaganda red (Nina Ross, Suzzy Roche, and Grace McLean) led by another woman wearing a martial beret (Ellen Winter). They perform Reddick’s hysterical original songs (I particularly enjoyed a spin of “Carol of the Bells” that includes the terms “supply-side,” “Reaganomics,” and “Armageddon”) with big voices and arch seriousness. They also step into tertiary roles (McLean exudes palpable sexual menace as Virgie’s Wellspring handler, while Ross embodies the solicitous comradery of a model KGB recruiter as Meek’s Soviet pen pal). The fate of the globe hangs in the balance, but we cannot stop laughing—and why should we? We’re all still here in 2026, fretting about the latest developments that threaten to destroy our lives decades after the declared end of history.

Director Knud Adams marvelously balances comedy with seriousness, crafting a recognizable American reality that is frequently invaded by the fantastical. The wood paneling and wall-to-wall red carpet of Afsoon Pajoufar’s set reference the ugliest aesthetics of late 20^th century interior design while leaving plenty of room for transformation and disorientation (a mirrored hallway stage right does this beautifully). Costume designer Brenda Abbandandolo gives us a variety of iconically ’80s looks, from the rainbow stitched on Meek’s jeans to Virgie’s DC power-blouse. Lighting designer Masha Tsimring dips it all in deep red for the musical numbers, illuminating Puddin’s face with the sickly glow of the television. Kathy Ruvuna has created multiple ’80s-themed sound collages in which the star is naturally always America’s first movie-star president.

But it’s the onstage actors who really leave an impression. Mitchell adds spice to every line she utters so we become instantly acquainted with this kindly yet shrewd older woman. We can see the lineage in Cobbs’s performance of a protective but occasionally petty Smooch. His squabbles with Lucien’s straight-backed Clay would make Cain and Abel blush. Finn, who has long possessed the best resting dread face in the business, outdoes herself in her performance of a profoundly conflicted woman trapped between a rock and a hard place (the audience marvels as she nearly downs an entire 2-liter bottle of water in one go). And Bowers perfectly embodies a precocious 10-year-old who knows by heart the things she has been taught but is still discovering what she thinks about the world.

As the era of global liberalism ushered in by the likes of Reagan and Thatcher sputters to its conclusion, now is the ideal time to look back on the world it supplanted and the growing pains that got us here. With Cold War Choir Practice, Reddick shows us life in the late-’80s in all its paranoid, hopeful, ridiculous glory.