New Jersey Repertory Company’s world premiere of A Change of Position has arrived in Long Branch to some of the strongest early notices the Lumia Theater has drawn in recent memory, with critics praising playwright Jeffrey Sweet for finding genuine comedy and real emotional depth inside a story that could easily have tipped into pure melodrama in less careful hands. The production runs through August 23rd, with performances Thursdays at 7 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 2 and 7 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m.

Set in a small Pennsylvania town in 2021, the play follows Sally, a guarded teenager living in a trailer with her mother Emma, who supports them both through sex work, a fact of their daily life that shapes everything from Sally’s after school routine to the emotional armor she has built up by the time the curtain rises. The plot turns when one of Emma’s regular clients, a wealthy, seemingly ordinary man named Vic, approaches Sally directly with an unexpected and morally complicated proposition, one that threatens to upend the fragile, survivalist equilibrium mother and daughter have built together.

Reviewers Praise a Story That Never Loses Its Grip

Jay Lustig, reviewing the production for NJArts.net, described it as a modest but genuinely affecting piece of work, one whose characters and their small, hard won steps forward feel authentic rather than manufactured for effect. Lustig singled out the play’s handling of Vic’s arrival specifically, noting that Sweet gets ahead of the story’s biggest credibility hurdle by having Sally herself directly question why a wealthy, unremarkable looking man would need to pay for company in the first place, a moment of sharp, character driven humor that Lustig credited with earning the audience’s trust before the plot’s more serious turns arrive. He also highlighted Éilis Cahill’s performance as Emma as the production’s standout, describing her as funny and sharp but also rough edged and quick to anger, a woman whose self destructive choices never once put her fierce love for her daughter in doubt.

Broadway World’s review took a similarly enthusiastic view of the production’s pacing, calling it a finely produced and enthralling comedic drama whose 90 minute runtime moves without a single slow stretch. That review praised Sweet specifically for populating the story with rich, distinct, memorable characters capable of hooking an audience’s empathy almost immediately, and predicted the play has a real future ahead of it, suggesting it is well positioned to be picked up by regional theaters well beyond Long Branch once its world premiere run concludes.

A Cast Built on Real Range

Alongside Cahill and Clancy, the production features Todd Cerveris as Vic, bringing Broadway and national touring credits from shows including South Pacific and War Horse to a role that requires balancing the script’s underlying humor against real dramatic weight, given how much of the plot’s tension depends on the audience actually believing Vic’s motivations. Ephraim Birney rounds out the cast as Trent, Sally’s coworker at a local food mart and the closest thing she has to a trusted confidant outside her own home, giving the play a grounded, plainspoken counterweight to the heavier material playing out between Sally, Emma, and Vic.

The Story Behind the Story

Part of what gives A Change of Position its particular resonance is where its characters actually came from. Sweet based the play on characters originally created by Michael Kosarowich, a Pennsylvania writer who found a creative home during the pandemic in Zoom playwriting workshops led by Sweet himself. Kosarowich died suddenly in July of 2022, and Sweet has continued developing the characters Kosarowich left behind, carrying the work through a 2023 staged reading at NJ Rep and now into this full, fully realized world premiere production. Kosarowich’s family has described being moved by how thoroughly Sweet embraced and preserved his characters, giving the production’s central story about survival, unexpected opportunity, and the choices that alter a life a quiet parallel in its own real world origin story.

Founded in 1997 by SuzAnne and Gabor Barabas, New Jersey Repertory Company has built its identity specifically around developing and premiering new work rather than staging established scripts, and A Change of Position fits squarely within that mission. For theatergoers looking to catch a genuine world premiere before it potentially makes its way to stages across the country, as Broadway World’s review suggests it will, the Lumia Theater’s run through August 23rd offers a rare first look at a script still very much on its way up.