‘Pay No Attention to the Girl’ at Target Margin

Pay No Attention to the Girl, a devised play inspired by The Thousand and One Nights, is the first installment in Target Margin’s multi-year exploration of that text, as well as the company’s debut at their new home, the Doxsee Theater in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The Doxsee is cavernous and gorgeous; and it’s used to great effect here by director David Herskowitz — along with scenic and lighting designers Carolyn Mraz and Kate McGee — in a playful, inventive, and sometimes-immersive staging that feels just right for this piece. 

Both an adaptation and a deconstruction of the medieval epic, Pay No Attention to the Girl explores the gender dynamics in Scheherazade’s tale and in some of the tales she tells, reassessing these stories through a feminist lens. 

This is an intriguing, admirable project. The work is most successful, however, when it prioritizes narrative clarity and allows the audience to draw their own conclusions; less so when it signposts the moral. It did not require any direct reference to Donald Trump, for example, for me to be thinking of him here — and of the ways pervasive misogyny has screwed us all. 

At times, I found myself longing for a stronger emotional immersion in the story-world, and I felt most deeply engaged when the characters — especially the women and feminine creatures — were presented without comment, as real people coping with an unjust world. This script flows fast, with dozens of situations and characters being portrayed by a talented cast of five in a 70-minute play; yet the bits I loved best were the slowest. Deepali Gupta’s haunting vocal solo is a highlight of the evening