Chagrin Falls Reviews
Chicago Tribune- Recommended
"...Director Sommer Austin's staging generally succeeds at building the connective tissue between these characters. But the production is sometimes hampered by overly hesitant performances, particularly from Cheung's Patrice. She does well at conveying the contained outsider/objective observer in the early scenes. But when we find out that Patrice's involvement with the case is more complicated than that of a curious journo, Cheung's flat affect keeps us from fully investing in the revelation."
Chicago Reader- Somewhat Recommended
"...Sommer Austin's production for the Agency Theatre Collective creates an engaging chosen-family dynamic in a motel and public house run by a compassionate but iron-strong matriarch of a manager (Denise Hoeflich). As the visitor, though, Jennifer Cheung delivers a curiously straight, nonreactive performance at total odds with the emotionally volatile circumstances around her."
The Fourth Walsh- Recommended
"...Denise Hoeflich is completely believable as Irene, the harried owner of the town's small motel-bar-restaurant that serves as one of the town's main watering holes. Hoeflich also gels nicely with Robert Koon, better known as a playwright, but looking natural here as a troubled Vietnam vet who's recently retired from 30 years at the slaughterhouse. Cody Lucas turns in an interesting, jumpy performance as a sensitive prison guard with secrets and a conscience (more than a bit underlined by his reading a paperback of Crime and Punishment). Overall though, Hoeflich feels like the essential glue of a well-bonded cast."
Picture This Post- Highly Recommended
"...Mia McCullough's award-winning Chagrin Falls makes a welcome return to Chicago, courtesy of the Agency Theater Collective's revival of the provocative 2001 drama. Set in a small Oklahoma town where the population survives economically on two institutions dedicated to killing - a cattle slaughterhouse and a prison with an execution chamber - Chagrin Falls probes the human condition, not gore and violence."
NewCity Chicago- Highly Recommended
"...Under Sommer Austin’s direction, The Agency Theater Collective presents a production that punches. Every resident of Chagrin Falls seems like they were born behind the bar of Irene’s motel. The relationships are intense and temporary as romances, fraught with untidiness and loss, dark as the guts we pretend not to see and claim not to have. "