The Niceties
“I don’t mean to be insensitive…but”
Last night, Intiman Theatre opened a play by Eleanor Burgess titled The Niceties, which could also have been titled The Cruelties based on the personality of the one of the characters, Janine Bosko, a baby-boomer professor of American History at an elite university in Connecticut. Bosko argued with her young Black millennial student, Zoe Reed about a number of issues: the founding fathers’ sources of wealth, the true nature of the American “Revolution,” and the validity of Zoe’s feelings about being “the other” in American society in general, as well as at an elitist institution cranking out future employees of Wall Street. 














