(To learn more about this show, please visit the show’s page here)

Performance 6/12/26 – Portland Stage Studio

Marie Elizabeth builds a clean, tight framework from which this show demands the viewer consider the danger of omission, complacency for peace, and losing sight of who we are. As precedented as these times are getting, I appreciated feeling lovingly called out because it’s so rare to be truly seen. Come for the camaraderie and stay for the comrades.

Submitted on 6/13/26 by Tarra Haskell, PF26 Independent Review Team

---

The world of the “Planet Of The Apes” franchise is rife with allegory. In this staged story within the fictionalized world, “Agenda For The Planet Of The Apes” includes many of the standards like ecological ruin and humankind’s hubris and destructive nature, but focuses more sharply on the treatment of apes living in sanctuaries and provokes the audience to think about the power of language, epistemic injustice, cultural imperialism, and the pitfalls of organizing against injustice.

Standout moments included the group’s emergent leader being challenged for providing study texts written by their oppressors, and a young ape arriving late, only to discover the group had wasted their time constructing a plan merely to plan a plan. But the most emotional beat of the show came from a storyline about a gorilla whose child was taken away without explanation. This forced me to grapple with the thought of losing my own child this way, not knowing when or if they would be returned, which then conjured thoughts of the devastating family separations carried out by ICE with government support.

Though there were several powerful messages and inspiring moments, the show remained distant. The performances were all well-crafted and, along with the simple staging, served the text well, but overall the atmosphere was a bit clinical, near Brechtian. I longed for more on an emotional level, be it through pacing and narrative drive or simply witnessing more moments of genuine connection and passion. If the opposite was the desire, then a harder lean into the cold, depressing, other-worldiness of the story within the sanctuary would work as well. Either of these would be needed if I were ever to move past the intellectual concepts and fulfill the show’s implied intention of igniting the dissident within who is so desperate for radical change.

Submitted on 6/15/26 by Nathan Gregory, PF26 Independent Review Team