Chicago Tribune - Recommended
"...Wechsler's production struggles in the Act 2, alongside the play's metadramatic stutters, which hurt the pace. But Valada-Viars is so relentlessly intense, she single-handedly holds your interest. The show also has the benefit of a very zesty high-tech set from Joe Schermoly that represents the hearts of the geeks with a series of graphic images on the walls of their studies/boudoirs. It's a clever way to look at a couple who cannot separate their personal lives from their research. And, these days, who can?"
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...Like Stoppard, the Berkeley-bred, Brooklyn-based Moses possesses a unique gift for blending the exceedingly brainy with the knowingly sexy and neurotically chaotic. He thrives on complexity, but he also knows that if you are going to have scenes filled with substantive talk about molecular biology, algorithms and the Traveling Salesman Problem (a matter crucial to theoretical computer science), you also had better have some attractive people taking their clothes off and at least trying to get into bed with each other."
Chicago Reader - Recommended
"...Moses deserves credit for managing to find the entertainment value in protein-interaction networks, but his efforts to correlate the characters' research to their relationship often feel strained and schematic. Jeremy Wechsler's staging gets by on the charm and sharp comic timing of the cast, especially Andrew Jessop as Molly's tightly wound faculty advisor and gangly, boyish Matt Holzfeind as Elliot. Holzfeind is so likable it's easy to forget how shallow his role is."
Centerstage - Highly Recommended
"...Starting with a set by Joe Schermoly that looks like the Apple store of the future and sets a stark, antiseptic tone, Wechsler than explodes that sterility in his transitions. Utilizing video (by Michael Standfill) and tracks of running lights (by Michael Rourke) all accompanied by an original score (Joe Fosco), Wechsler is able to create a key sense of narrative propulsion. As Elliot and Molly hope from meet-cute to hook-up to nebulous semi-togetherness, the gathering momentum of their feelings is echoed in the increasingly complex transitions. And as the complexity increases, so does the possibility the everything will collapse. How the script, and the production embodies that collapse is something that should only be seen, not described. In keeping with the idea of old cliches, I don't think that "Completeness" breaks any new ground. But the way it experiments with familiar elements results in a very satisfying theatrical reaction."
Time Out Chicago - Highly Recommended
"....Moses has found a terrific analogy, even if he does pound the nail hard: “Is there really a way to know up front for sure?” Molly asks Elliott about the viability of her data but, just as surely, about the viability of their new relationship. There isn’t, of course. Theories can only be tested, never proven, and as Elliott demonstrates via a famously unsolvable math problem, the number of paths they could take is exponentially too large to count. (Rae Gray and Andrew Jessop nicely embody a number of other fish in the sea.) Jeremy Wechsler’s smart, handsome staging, with a sleek set by Joe Schermoly and video design by Michael Stanfill that each hold a number of surprises, rides the line between sensual and cerebral. Meanwhile, the charismatic Holzfeind and Valada-Viars parlay higher math and genome mapping into persuasive pillow talk, demonstrating proficiency in yet another scientific discipline: chemistry."
Stage and Cinema - Highly Recommended
"...It's brainy almost beyond endurance and savvy in its approach/avoidance strategies of gaming love. Happily, Itamar Moses' Completeness at Theater Wit is also engrossingly directed by Jeremy Wechsler as it chronicles a complicated, captivating relationship between two scientific searchers, Elliott and Molly. Easily and perversely, they can reason themselves out of what they want most. Will these born learners discover the art (not science) of forgetting what hurts to grasp what helps?"
ChicagoCritic - Recommended
"...Filled with geeky eloquence and stumbling in-articulation. Completeness is a sweet, light-hearted romantic comedy which two most likable characters. We laugh, we relate and we cheer for Elliott and Molly to go for total commitment. Playwright Moses weaves dense intellectual quandaries and basic human romantic sparks into s delightful, sexy and honest contemporary comedy. he proves that love does, indeed, defy logic. One of the achievements of this production is how Holzfeind and Valada-Viars deftly speak, in rapid-fire, Moses tech speak with much elliptical, incomplete sentence much like Mamet-speak proving that scientific dialogue with personal interjections can both educate and reveal character. It can also be funny."
Chicago Theatre Review - Highly Recommended
"...I strode forth from Completeness feeling almost, well, complete. Not only had I been treated to a complex and beautiful story of love in our times, but I had also been thoroughly educated in the wonders of the universe, the timeless struggles of the heart (and associated anatomy), and the lengths to which actors and designers will go to raise their art another notch (or ten) and give us all the gift of their time, talent and attention."
Chicagoland Theater Reviews - Recommended
"...Roughly half of "Completeness" at Theater Wit is a conventional boy-meets-girl romance. The other half consists of arcane discussions of molecular biology and computer science. That makes "Completeness" a pretty strange play."
