A Q Brothers' Christmas Carol at Chicago Shakespeare Theater

Chicago Tribune - Somewhat Recommended

"..."A Q Brothers' Christmas Carol" is billed as a work in progress at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, where it plays the upstairs venue there on Navy Pier. Certainly the party was not a work in progress but very much under way on Saturday night. Q shows attract a much younger crowd than you'd find at, say, "The Merry Wives of Windsor" downstairs and, what with the thousands of tiny lights that make up Scott Davis' and Jesse Klug's visuals, the brews available for carriage into the theater and an 80-minute running time, this was quite the scene. Certainly, if you have teens at home rolling their eyes at the very prospect of some family outing to one of those usual Christmas pageants, this one likely will spark more interest. And it's savvy and witty enough to appeal to a broad swath of folks."

Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended

"...Though billed as "a work-in-progress," the show (developed with Rick Boynton, and co-written and performed by siblings GQ and JQ, plus Jackson Doran and Postell Pringle, all the same forces behind the recent hit, "Othello: The Remix") already is highly polished and hilarious, and driven by the superb musical stylings of DJ Super Nova. Wildly irreverent, and happily politically incorrect, it still holds fast to Dickens' essential message that love and the spirit of giving, not money, are the only truly valuable things in life."

Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended

"...Poor old Scrooge. Every year, we pry into his bedchambers to watch him squirm. But it's rarely as hilarious as in this wacky new hip-hop adaptation of the Dickens tale, which outfits the ghost of Marley with dreadlocks and a Jamaican accent. Brothers GQ and JQ, whose similar revisions of Shakespeare have toured internationally, codirect and star in this workshop production, which balances its subversive, biting humor with a weirdly wholesome energy. With each ghost, the show moves through different subgenres of hip-hop, doing well by all."

Time Out Chicago - Recommended

"...If anything at this point in its development, A Q Brothers' Christmas Carol might be too eager to go for the broad, easy joke; it could use a bit more soberness in places. But so much of it works-particularly Pringle's jolly spirit of Christmas past, Doran's charades-obsessed Fred and JQ's winsomely sickly Li'l Tim Cratchit-that it's on its way to joining the pantheon of worthy Scrooges."