Chicago Tribune - Recommended
"...I'm not so sure that "Antigonick" sheds new light on the question of the efficacy of Antigone's martyrdom, but Carson's re-imagining and Green's well-honed staging do a fine job of re-etching the tale as a parallel for our contemporary conundrum: How can we counter powerful despots bent on preserving "order" through lethal suppression of dissent?"
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...Sideshow Theatre meets Carson’s singular vision with a production that eagerly subverts expectations, mixing up its casting by gender, age, and color. It's an ensemble achievement, and director Jonathan L. Green's elegant staging reflects this, seamlessly flowing from choral recitation to individual speech and back."
Gapers Block - Recommended
"...Jonathan L. Green's direction maintains the beat of the metronome and measures out the tragedies that befall the family in both versions. Yu Shibagaki's minimalist stage design is practical for the small space, with sidewalls suggesting a skateboard park. A large portrait of Oedipus, in a uniform that would have suited a South American general, looms ominously over the stage. Noel Huntzinger's costume choices are contemporary but work timelessly."
Time Out Chicago - Recommended
"...But Carson’s translation deals in matters of timing; the “nick” of her title is, among other things, a pondering of “the nick of time” and how that’s measured, as well as a silent onstage character, Nick (David Lawrence Hamilton), who “measures things.” In Green’s staging, Nick sits at a desk behind a ticking metronome, filling out death certificates he hangs on the rear wall as the tragedy’s casualties pile up. Seeing Carson’s Antigonick played two ways against Nick’s tick-tocking measure of inevitability makes for an oddly affecting evening."
Chicago On the Aisle - Highly Recommended
"...It is a breathtaking coup de theatre, Sideshow Theatre's time-altering, mind-bending double take on Anne Carson's bizarre translation of Sophocles' classic Greek tragedy "Antigone.""
Stage and Cinema - Recommended
"...This “free translation” of Sophocles’ timeless tragedy about a sister against the state is only 75 minutes long. Even so, Antigonick manages to almost completely repeat itself. The catch or switch is that the protagonists’ sexes are reversed, as if to prevent a universal conflict from ever being sex-specific. Thanks to Canadian poet and MacArthur genius Anne Carson, Ann James gets to play both the Theban tyrant Creon and his adversary/victim Antigone. A terse showdown is repeated for effect. But it comes at a cost: There’s time enough for the truncated chorus to cast its commentary on Antigone’s uncompromisable challenge–but not for the play’s piteous part, Creon’s agonizing, almost paternal, attempts to talk Antigone out of her suicidal protest. This is definitely not a fight in the family."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Recommended
"...Antigonick is Art with a capital "A". It is lofty, unwieldy, provocative, conscientious, and yes, a little pretentious. It is a work aimed at no one in particular though not without purpose. Antigonick has a secret, which it feels no compulsion to unveil. It is contained in every thousand yard stare and beguiling turn of phrase. Yet, what it withholds marks the true success of this production."
Around The Town Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...For two millennia, observers have wondered if Sophocles' Antigone is the tragedy of Creon or its eponymous heroine. Ann James has answered the question in one night. In the first half of The Sideshow Theatre Company's production of Anne Carson's (very) free translation of Sophocles' "Antigonick," Ms. James plays Kreon, the successor to the ill-fated Oedipus, but director Jonathan L. Green has made the decision to run the play through twice, and in the second half, she plays Antigonick: Oedipus' daughter who is determined to bury her slain brother in violation of King Kreon's decree that holds he was a traitor to Thebes."