Review: The Visitors, a Dark Comedy About Siblings

What do we owe our siblings? A rational individual living in the West in 2026 might reasonably say nothing, that the coincidence of sharing the same parents does not necessarily confer obligation. Of course, that is a minority opinion in the grand sweep of history, in which humans have mostly been our brothers’ keepers. But there’s always a limit to our love, even when we protest otherwise.

Joanna (Mary Wiseman) tests that boundary in Bryna Turner’s The Visitors, now making its world premiere with Second Stage at the Pershing Square Signature Center. The youngest of four siblings, the pushing-40 lesbian lives with her nonbinary partner Naomi (Esco Jouléy) in a fabulous loft in New York City, where she has a fun job that at least one of her siblings considers not real. “I feel like I’m finally entering my Joanna era,” her older sister Theresa (Celia Keenan-Bolger) tells her as she looks forward to the time her emotional terrorist of a teenage daughter leaves the house and Mom can finally focus on what makes her happy. It’s a backhanded compliment.

Older brother Henry (Will Pullen) is a new father, so his most stressful days as a parent and provider are still ahead of him, and he acts like it. Joanna’s oldest brother, Rory (Danny Wolohan), is also a dad, but the on-again-off-again meth addict does not have custody. Estranged from their brother for years, Henry and Theresa are shocked when Rory shows up to Joanna’s apartment for an urgent all-siblings summit in which she makes an alarming request: Both of her kidneys are failing, and she needs one of them, her closest genetic relatives, to give her one. “It’s a big ask,” she says, sucking air through her teeth like she’s just asked a waiter for a spoon.

Turner wrings a laugh a minute from this dire scenario, a pitch-black comedy set in the gap between rhetoric (“I love you” is the most-repeated phrase in the play) and action. Joanna tells her siblings that this ultimate act of love cannot be the result of coercion … and that they better attest to that in front of the doctors and on whatever legal waivers they must sign. Theresa says aloud what we’re all thinking: “What is family but coercion?”

Winner of the 2025 Isabelle Stevenson Tony for humanitarian work, Keenan-Bolger easily fulfills the role of the giving tree, an eldest sibling and mom who reflexively changes the diaper of Henry’s daughter without being asked. A lumbering bearish presence, Wolohan is equally well-cast as the family screwup desperate to make amends. “I’ll do it,” he shouts, before Joanna has even made her request. He’s like a Sim overcompensating for a negative social score. That leaves Pullen the part of the villain, which he plays with gusto, jabbing his siblings with his snide remarks at every available opportunity.

A scene in which they play the board game Settlers of Catan tells us so much about the dynamics of this family, but also every family. Turner depicts how roles and relationships are set from an early age. Even if you move across the country to reinvent yourself, being around the people who knew you first has a way of causing you to regress. And who really wants to relinquish a kidney to the people who bring out the worst in you?

As they play, Naomi asks, “Do you think Catan was occupied land before we settled here?” That she is the voice of reason throughout (Jouléy is positively saintly in this underwritten role) should tell you just how unreasonable things get, often in a way that feels forced—a playwright driving hard to reach an outrageous and farcical conclusion within the 95-minute time allotment.

Director Jenna Worsham isn’t always able to finesse the naked contrivance of Turner’s script, but she has staged it on an attractive set by designer Kate Noll, a hideaway for New York City creatives with multiple levels and nooks for eavesdropping. Stacey Derosier handsomely lights the space with natural hues beaming through the translucent industrial windowpanes stage right. Fan Zhang creates authentic street sounds and the clanging of pipes in this prewar space. Ásta Bennie Hostetter costumes the characters to account for the stories they are projecting into the world: Henry’s khaki pants and puffer vest tell the world, “I’m prickly and competent,” while Joanna’s leopard tights and feather-fringed duster scream “diehard hipster.”

As with Turner’s 2022 play At the Wedding, Wiseman is the not-so-secret weapon. Piercing eyes and a demure little mouth under a tangle of red hair, she embodies a woman fighting (but not that hard) to keep her worst impulses in check. Early on we understand that she’s the most volatile character onstage … even more than the meth addict. And like Lucy before her, she draws all focus in her tenacious pursuit of her objective. Get her a sitcom already.

The Visitors is not the funniest play of the year, but it’s still hilarious in its assessment of family in the high age of liberal individualism. It’s all well and good to follow your bliss in a period of abundance, but when hard times return, who really has your back?