Preston Max Allen’s new play for MCC Theater feels like a Very Special Episode. Caroline
trades in hot-button issues — trans kids, addiction and recovery, fractured family narratives —
with a patina of nuance, but it largely stays on the surface of these complex topics. David
Cromer’s unsurprisingly expert production helps gloss over deficits in the writing, aided by Lee
Jellineck’s fine scenic design, which fluidly moves between chic suburban living rooms and dire
roadside motels, and Tyler Micoleau’s evocative lighting, which creates distinct and memorable
stage pictures. Yet the entire evening seems less than the sum of its considerable parts.

Not unlike Gypsy, the title Caroline bears the name of the child but focuses more intently on her
family. After Maddie (Chloë Grace Moretz) removes her nine-year-old trans daughter (River
Lipe-Smith) from a hostile environment, she lands at the home she abandoned decades early
as a drug-addicted teen. Her mother Rhea (Amy Landecker) regards Maddie’s homecoming
with understandable skepticism, though she believably warms to her grandchild. Maddie needs
Rhea’s help to ensure both Caroline’s safety and her access to trans-informed medical care, but
in quick succession, Allen’s script hits the expected marks of familial melodrama: the happy
reunion, the predictable recriminations, the tense falling-out.

Moretz, making a welcome return to the New York stage after eleven years, turns in a
sensational performance, expertly balancing pain and resilience as Maddie advocates for
Caroline…and for herself. Her outsize emotionality is well balanced by Landecker, who keeps
Rhea’s temperature at a bare simmer. Both characters often seem to represent ideas more than
people, and at times, David Hyman’s costumes do more to telegraph their traits than Allen’s
writing. But in their riveting final scene together, Moretz and Landecker leave you hanging on
their every word.

And that’s the problem: for large swaths of Caroline’s ninety-minute running time, it’s easy to
forget Caroline altogether. She ultimately feels like a plot contrivance, the necessary piece of
the puzzle that gets Maddie back to Rhea’s doorstep. Her story, and this issue, deserve better
than that. And while Lipe-Smith is a refreshingly composed child performer, I’m not sure any
young actor could effectively thread the needle between maturity and puerility that the role
requires.