Caroline – 26 September 2025

For a show with a simple, easy-to-follow plotline, the depth and complexity of Caroline was really striking. The nuance of Preston Max Allen’s script coupled with how deeply personal David Cromer’s direction felt made the idea of raising a transgender 9 year old seem very approachable and simple. The story followed Maddie (Chloe Grace Moretz) as she took her injured daughter, Caroline (River Lipe-Smith) to seek help from her mother, Rhea (Amy Landecker) with the hope of mending the broken relationship that Maddie’s struggle with addiction had caused between her and her parents. Rather than being about Caroline’s struggle for acceptance, Caroline and her gender are taken as a given with the focus being on Maddie’s struggle for acceptance. This juxtaposition is significant because transgender children are significantly more controversial than addiction and theft in today’s society. Caroline is a brilliant vehicle to suggest that transgender people can live wonderfully harmless lives and that all people have a capacity for mistakes that do genuine harm, even if they have the best upbringing and access to resources.

Maddie herself is not painted as a bad person. Far from it. Maddie is the hero of her own story, with Caroline as a pillar of strength who enables Maddie to resist the temptations of her former ways in order to be a good mother. She listens to her daughter and makes her feel loved, so much so that when Caroline is given a choice between an easy life with strangers and a tough life with her mom, Caroline only pretends to think about it. She has given her mother the blanket acceptance that her mother has given her. Maddie acknowledges the pain that her mistakes caused her mother, but Rhea is not interested in hearing her. Rhea cannot tell if Maddie is being genuine. While this at first seems unfair, after a while it is hard to dismiss that Rhea has seen Maddie fall into patterns that have scared her and harmed her family. Maddie doesn’t win her battle for acceptance, but it does crack her open and force her to examine that sometimes, the sickness wins. Yet at 9 years old, Maddie’s daughter chooses her. Is 9 an age at which one can make an informed decision? Does Caroline understand what she is passing up in Rhea’s offer to live a comfortable life with full access to the best medical care her current world has to offer? As a transgender person myself, I have to go with, “no.” Nine is not old enough to understand what it means to struggle with a single mother with a criminal record who is going to try her best. But 9 is old enough to understand what is and is not good. And Caroline sees Rhea, who paints herself as a saint who does all of the right things for everyone’s safety, as “nervous about being nice” just as clearly as she sees herself as the beautiful girl that she is.

Caroline is a really beautiful, powerful piece about how it is actions that dictate who a person is and whether or not they are good, not gender or any other trait that is innate from birth. Rhea’s mistrustfulness comes from Maddie’s actions, despite Maddie’s assertion that Rhea “never liked me.” Caroline is always a kid first and a transgender girl second. Maddie talks about providing for her kid, and Caroline, for her part, is the least objectionable character on stage by far.  River Lipe-Smith shapes this character beautifully. Lipe-Smith infuses Caroline with an innocence and intelligence that makes the character instantly lovable. In the last moment, when Caroline and Maddie are leaving Rhea’s home, Caroline leaves behind a friendship bracelet for Rhea, so “she can change her mind” if she wants to. Just as Caroline is the hope that keeps Maddie functioning and Rhea (for the moment) tolerating Maddie, she is the hope for the future of other transgender children. She leaves behind a desire for friendship, community, and love because she is the hope of this play: that people can be truly seen for who they are without it having to sever familial relationships. Caroline is so charming, remarkable, and wise beyond her years that it’s easy to forget that she’s anything more complex than Maddie’s kid.

One final moment to draw attention to—Rhea’s silence when Maddie asks if Rhea would have let her in if she had come to Rhea’s doorstep by herself, without her daughter. This silence is deafening and it speaks volumes about Rhea’s cruelty to Maddie—but also Maddie’s cruelty to Rhea. There is a story here that Caroline may someday know, but will likely never experience. As Maddie says in her final fight with Rhea, even if Caroline were to fall prey to addiction, Maddie would love her. Caroline is really Maddie’s story—the story of a woman who went through hell and rose like a phoenix from the flame as the best version of herself, ready to do the difficult work of being a mother to a wonderfully unique child, as all children are. In its short 90-minute run time, Caroline gracefully weaves together a family and normalizes unfixable fallouts and the crushing disappointment of being given up on. It is a strong, powerful portrayal of a judgmental world that remains surprising at every turn and leaves audience members with tears in their eyes and smiles on their faces.

I attended this performance on a press pass from Print Shop PR.