Skeleton Crew

This astute and exquisitely forged play is the third story in Dominique Morisseau’s three-play Detroit Project Cycle, comprised of Paradise Blue (2012), Detroit ’67 (2013) and Skeleton Crew (2016). Set in the winter of 2008-2009, as the Great Recession was reaching its lowest ebb, the remaining ‘skeleton crew’, a handful of workers at the last auto-stamping plant in hard-hit Detroit, are wondering how soon they’ll lose their jobs and be left without means of support. Bonded by long years together in the workplace, they continue to share their everyday joys, pains, hopes and despair – at this point added to their dread that the plant will fold. Now much of their time together focuses on their intersecting life stories, overlaid with heartache and bitterness. Critics’ responses chronicle the raw emotions: “… a taut and vibrant … drama with vivid characters, keen-eared dialogue, and inside insights into this [no-holds barred] working class world. …” (New York Daily News)