Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"..."Columbinus," which you don't want to miss, if you can bear this topic, achieves many things, but one of its most remarkable accomplishments is how well, in its first act, it charts the progression of teenage alienation, a quotidian emotion, perhaps, but not one that mixes well with the easy availability of firepower in these United States."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"..,So it is quite obvious that writers Stephen Karam and PJ Paparelli (the latter also has devised the near-balletic staging for this American Theatre Company production, “a world premiere of the revised version” first seen in Chicago in 2008) have done something right. It is often difficult to watch “Columbinus,” yet you watch it compulsively."
Chicago Reader - Somewhat Recommended
"...Paparelli's staging here isn't nearly as compelling as the play's 2008 Chicago premiere at Raven Theatre was, and his revisions to the script-incorporating recent interviews with survivors-feel anticlimactic. Nonetheless, Columbine is an important story that commands attention."
Time Out Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...That conjecture sits uneasily beside the new Act III, a remarkably affecting and insightfully arranged bit of verbatim theater that takes us through the attack’s long aftermath, up to the dedication of the Columbine memorial—and on through the mass shootings in Aurora, Newtown and elsewhere. Still, on the whole this production improves on the original columbinus, which felt well-meaning but unintentionally exploitative. With its additions, and in Paparelli’s strong staging featuring a heartfelt, achingly honest cast, the play finds a new power."
ShowBizChicago - Highly Recommended
"...Paparelli takes us into the lives of everyday high schoolers. They're painted in broad strokes as jocks, goths, nerds, pretty girls, super-Christians and the like, but they represent all-too-real characteristics that no teenager can truly escape. We see with crushing reality how arbitrarily the tormentors become the tormented, like the confident cool kid hiding his homosexuality or the studious teacher's pet who secretly wonders if he's missing the point. And then we have the so-called loners, the freaks. It's safe to say that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were more than just misunderstood, but Columbinus shows them as lonely, angry teenagers in a time before the world knew them as attempted mass-murders."
ChicagoCritic - Recommended
"...Columbinus is a major theatrical event that vividly dramatizes the horrific events from 1999 that unfortunately has become too normal of an event in America that we become numbed to its tragedy. This production reminds us that guns and violent behavior must be stopped if we are to remain a civilized society. Unfortunatel,y the slaughter of first graders in Newton has diminished the memory of the Littleton tragedy."
Chicagoland Theater Reviews - Highly Recommended
"..."Columbinus" is acted out by eight exceptionally committed and talented young actors who play multiple roles, both teenagers and adults. First among equals is Matthew Bausone, astonishingly just a recent graduate of Illinois State University and apparently with no previous major stage experience. Bausone's portrayal of the driven, angry, yet intelligent Harris is a scorcher. His small physical stature seems to intensify the ferocity of his violent obsessions. New York actor Eric Folks is several inches taller than Bausone, with floppy light hair compared to Bausone's trimmed dark look, making them a striking visual couple. Bausone's Harris acts out of hate and bitterness. Folks's Klebold seems to be enjoying himself as he hunts down his victims."
