Chicago Tribune - Somewhat Recommended
"...“Boy” certainly has value as a dramatic work. It’s just hard to contain this explosively experiential narrative in a very cautious off-Broadway play that feels somehow removed. You keep wanting Adam to be given more of a chance to self-actualize, to go further, to love as he has the innate human right to live."
Chicago On the Aisle - Recommended
"...Adam is a boy, age maybe 20. So you’re thinking, OK, if he’s 20, he’s more man than boy. Exactly. But for Adam, in Anna Ziegler’s play “Boy,” getting to manhood meant first establishing his boyhood – or boyness, if you like. And that is both the most engaging and the most problematic part of this drama now on the boards at TimeLine Theatre."
Stage and Cinema - Highly Recommended
"...Director Damon Kiely works many theatrical miracles on TimeLine's runway stage, surrounded by a cabinet of childhood curiosities, so many "Cornell boxes" lovingly assembled by scenic designer Arnel Sancianco. Rightly refusing the anger that happily never mars Ziegler's golden script, five unimprovable actors create no villains or victims. They have no axes to grind. Strangely, that negative triumph feels every bit as satisfying as the bedrock authenticity they bring to a mother, father, doctor, lover, and, first and finally, a son."
Let's Play at ChicagoNow - Somewhat Recommended
"...Director Damon Kiely navigates this play so that it will enlighten the distinctive sense of gender that we all possess. "Boy" is as poignant and essential a play to what is happening around the "gender revolution" of understanding the complexity of gender identity and the after-effects of choices we make for those we love."
Around The Town Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...One of the beautiful parts of this play/story is that on the way home, you will have some strong discussion about what you witnessed. In fact, part of the Timeline mystique is that you never just walk out when a play is over. Yes, you always think about what you just saw, and very often, do discuss the ups and downs, the truths and lies. That is the brilliance of this company that has been thrilling Chicago audience since 1997."
Chicago Theatre Review - Highly Recommended
"...In Damon Kiely's accomplished and heartfelt production of Anna Ziegler's 2015 play, a nominee for the New York's Outer Critics Circle Award, audiences will travel to a world many have never experienced. That's the power of great theatre and, most certainly, of this wonderfully moving production. At each performance, theatergoers will step into the shoes of Adam Turner and come to understand a little of the anguish known to those undergoing gender transition and other sexual orientation issues. Theo Germaine's performance is enlightening and career-defining in, perhaps, the greatest performance of their young career. This is quite likely the first must-see production of the new year."
Third Coast Review - Recommended
"...Adam’s somewhat supportive working-class Iowan parents are alternately confused (mom Trudy, played by Mechelle Moe) and frustrated (angry dad Doug played by Stef Tovar) as they navigate gender non-conformity issues between 1968 and 1990 (scored by a fabulous period soundtrack, including Cheap Trick’s “The Flame” and Young MC’s “Bust A Move,” designed by Karli Blalock)."
Chicago On Stage - Highly Recommended
"...Timeline Theatre's newest production, Anna Ziegler's Boy, is a lot of things. It is an account, albeit highly fictionalized, of events that actually happened to a child with mangled genitalia who, as a result of the recommendation of a famous gender doctor, was brought up as a girl. It is the story of a family torn apart by that decision. It is the (much softened) account of the relationship that a child builds with a therapist. It's the story of what happens when that therapist lets you down, when it turns out that he may have cared more about his own faulty theories than about your well-being. It is a tale of a cis boy brought up as a girl because of those faulty theories who ultimately fails so badly at being a girl that he returns to being a boy. And, perhaps most important of all, it is the story of how that boy overcomes the pain and falls in love."
Picture This Post - Highly Recommended
"...The play runs seamlessly for 90 minutes that pass in a blink of an eye. The acts are interconnected in a very pleasant way. Actors coming and going are interlacing the story flawlessly in a way the public is fully engaged from the beginning till the end. As the final act concludes, the audience breaks the silence with fervent applause in appreciation for the astonishing work of these actors."
NewCity Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...Theo Germaine in the leading role is simply breathtaking. The story transitions, as does the protagonist, back and forth in time and during every moment Germaine is completely believable. There is a light inside them that radiates, no matter the moment the character is living. Our favorite actors have that "it-quality" that is outside their work, while informing all of it. Here is a soul to watch, for they are primed to do great things, theatrically or otherwise."