Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"...Many Chicago artists here are working at their peak. John Culbert's setting, centered on a sunken, infernal basement where Caroline washes, dries and folds, looks simple enough. But it's uncommonly resonant. And the actress Kate Fry offers a simply dazzling performance as a young second wife from New York trying to do the right thing in an impossible situation in which her maid is angry, her husband is withdrawn, and the 8-year-old, Kushner-like kid of the household doesn't love her. Fry, who seems wholly subsumed by this role, makes you feel every stab of her character's pain."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...Newell's production (played out on John Culbert's minimalist set, magically lit by Robert Denton), subtly and beautifully captures the mythic element of Kushner's script. Think "Black Narcissus" and the River Styx, thanks to a mesmerizing Harriet Nzinga Plumpp as the changeable Moon, a trio of Supremes-like singers emanating from Caroline's radio (Starr Busby, Barbara L.W. Myers and Donica Lynn), and a Washing Machine and Dryer (Plumpp and Byron Glenn Willlis) with vivid lives of their own."
Daily Herald - Highly Recommended
"...Sharing the acclaim is the accomplished music director Doug Peck. He further solidifies his reputation with his artful re-imagining of Tesori's remarkable score, in which a jazzy clarinet riff morphs into a sprightly Hanukkah song and a wordless lament provides counterpoint to a gospel-tinged melody."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...when director Charles Newell draws our attention to the characters and their emotions, the work achieves a rare potence. In the past, Newell and music director Doug Peck have collaborated on stripped-down rethinkings of big, old-fashioned Broadway musicals like Guys and Dolls and Carousel; this production compellingly, sometimes even magically, brings the same thoughtful, challenging perspective to offbeat material."
Windy City Times - Highly Recommended
"...In Caroline, or Change, artistic director Charles Newell finally has found the American contemporary opera he's sought for some years; a work of musical theater beyond the traditional Broadway song-and-dance formula but with American historical themes and a red-white-and-blue score that hovers between Broadway and popular music. He's directed it with a tremendously sharp eye and a superlative cast to create the season's first must-see show."
Chicago Free Press - Highly Recommended
"...Charles Newell’s triumphant Chicago premiere provides heat and truth. At its big heart is E. Faye Butler’s achingly authentic Caroline, a hardened, tough-loving survivor for whom neither religion or the civil rights movement offers solace for a lifetime of lousy luck. As her college-bound confidante Dotty, Jacqueline Williams gives Caroline hope for a future that escapes her past. The present, however, is inextricably present in Malcolm Durning’s Noah, a curious boy who eventually proves no better than his background. (This revelation must have haunted Kushner beyond any musical’s ability to exorcize the memory.)"
Copley News Service - Highly Recommended
"...The opening night audience at the Court Theatre gave “Caroline, or Change” a raucous ovation at the curtain call. The spectators left the theater on an emotional high, and rightly so. This is an inventive, highly personal musical. The show may be some kind of quirky masterpiece, but it also carries a considerable load of thematic difficulties."
Edge - Highly Recommended
"...Tony Kushner’s talent is in telling people’s stories; exposing their internal crises and peeling their self-protective layers away before the eyes of his show’s observers. As to his other plot elements, less is more might have been a good watchword. Still, regardless of some plot confusion, or rather plot jamming, the performances and voices in this production make nabbing a last minute ticket highly recommended."
Time Out Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...howling Caroline, one of this country’s great dramatic works of the last few decades and among its most honest examinations of our democracy’s accidental caste system, trusts you to leave all this baggage at the door. I suggest you accept the challenge. Charles Newell’s steely, graceful production blows a hole through the heart."
ChicagoCritic - Recommended
"...Caroline or Change” will either get you to love it or hate it. There is enough material to admire or criticize in this multi-themed ambitious chamber piece. It is an important work that needs to be experienced."
