We assume love has one beginning, one turmoil, one ending — until Shifters walks into Cherry Lane Theatre and rewrites it.
In fact, what stays with you isn’t the ending. It’s the threads that made Dre and Des — the two people at its center — who they are.
Photo Courtesy: Marc J. Franklin
The Cherry Lane Theatre provides the perfect atmosphere for this discovery, staging Shifters‘ Off-Broadway premiere in a room built for intimacy. With fewer than 200 seats — some of them right on the stage — the proximity to the art feels intoxicating. A curated playlist drifting between Neo-Soul and R&B only deepens that closeness. Meanwhile, Neil Austin’s lighting design moves in step with Lombe’s writing and Linton’s direction.
Shifters is not your typical play — the director and the playwright built something rare together. “When I was invited to write a Black British love story for the stage by our director Lynette Linton, I thought a lot about the existing canon in this genre,” Lombe said. “Who gets to be viewed and celebrated as a romantic lead?” That question became the seed of Shifters, now extended through September 13.
Photo Courtesy: Marc J. Franklin
Notably, the strength of this piece was not lost on the industry. Idris Elba, Little Simz, and Danai Gurira all joined the producing team for the North American premiere. These are serious names attaching themselves to a story that started in West London. But how did a two-person production built on the memory of young love and its complexities become such a hit across the sea?
Lombe’s writing captures the complexity beneath characters who quite literally shift through phases of life. Together, she and Linton take the audience through the innocence of youth and the weight of adulthood. Although the journey runs one hour and forty-five minutes, it never once feels long.
Much of that momentum comes from the music. Between scenes, the soundtrack drifts across cultures and genres — hits from “Be Your Girl” to P-Square — and it does more than set a mood. For audience members who might not immediately see themselves in Dre and Des, the music becomes its own way in. It’s a shared language underneath the specific one the characters speak.
Photo Courtesy: Marc J. Franklin
Daniel Ezra brings the same raw energy to Dre that made him a standout as Spencer James on All American. In particular, his Dre is endearing, grounded, the kind of steady presence the story needs to keep circling back to. Meanwhile, opposite him, Heather Agyepong has embodied Des longer than anyone. She originated the role at the Bush Theatre, carried it through the West End, and has now brought it to Off-Broadway. Where Dre grounds the story, Des carries its Black girl joy center stage. If the play has a lifeline, it’s her.
Ultimately, the magic in Shifters isn’t that it’s a love story. It’s that it’s a love story about the threads that made Dre and Des who they are — the same threads that make the rest of us who we are, too. Playing through September 13, 2026, Shifters is opening a door for audience members to see themselves in it. The question is whether they’re ready to look.
