‘Cost of Living’ Review: Martyna Majok’s Pulitzer-Winning Drama Makes Sensational Broadway Debut
Naveen Kumar What gives life value and makes it worth our daily toil? What does it mean to need another person, and what do we owe each other? It is a testament to the brilliant craft of Martyna Majok’s “Cost of Living,” now on Broadway after a successful off Broadway run, that it poses these sorts of colossal questions in scenes so bracingly intimate that you might be tempted to look away were they not so utterly magnetic. There’s writing specific characters that shimmer with universal truth, then there’s managing to capture, in the span of 100 minutes, how it feels to be alive. “Cost of Living,” which won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for drama, achieves insights about the human condition by zooming in on its particulars, compelling audiences to question what we take for granted and what might happen if we didn’t. It’s a heart-opening exercise in empathy deftly suited to the form, the kind of theater that imprints on the body and lives in your bones.