Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"...All of the performances are bang on target. Catherine Combs plays the relatively normal Ani without quite succumbing to normalcy, Michael Crane's fact-checking Lorin embraces the sadness of nonadvancement and Kyle Beltran plays the quiet intern Miles with just enough guilelessness that you firmly suspect guile, as does everyone else. But the play revolves around Dean, a survivor, and thus a man whose cynicism has passed the point where he can access genuine feeling, even when circumstances change. Spahn is superb. I just walked passed his doppelganger in my own office and thought of him again."
Chicago Sun Times - Somewhat Recommended
"...Suffice it to say I am deeply ambivalent about this play, though it redeems itself to some extent in what might be described as its “second-and-a-half” act. The production, directed by Evan Cabnet in a style that echoes the super-sized print of a tabloid (or a Facebook entry gone viral), it operates in the overkill zone. And while on one level it has a sort of lurid and appropriately ferocious satirical appeal, on the other it feels heavy-handed and manipulative in the extreme, and often leaves the audience laughing at some wholly horrifying things."
Daily Herald - Highly Recommended
"...I found it engrossing and honest, albeit cynical. And one of the questions it raises is one worth considering: How well do we know the guy or gal in the neighboring cubicle?"
Chicago Reader - Somewhat Recommended
"...Director Evan Cabnet has a winning cast and ingenious designers at his disposal, making this discursive, intermittently poignant evening quite entertaining. If only it had more to say."
Stage and Cinema - Somewhat Recommended
"...It’s presumably okay to reveal the actual names of the Gotham actors—Kyle Beltran, Catherine Combs, Michael Crane, Jeanine Serralles, Ryan Spahn, and Jennifer Kim (as the most offensive Asian “tiger” bitch you ever endured). They play underachieving stereotypes and overachieving caricatures that you may or not may not recognize caught up in a crisis that’s both calculated and unedifying. Accuracy alert: Two memorable characters have the integrity not to stoop to the occasion. You can only hope the audience identifies with them."
ChicagoCritic - Recommended
"...I can’t say more so as not to violate that note about revealing key plot elements in this review. Act two got me to understand what Jacobs-Jenkins was aiming for. This is a shockingly provocative drama that is a tad over written with underdeveloped characters with some humor. The performances were terrific and the themes come together in act two. Gloria is worth a visit."
Around The Town Chicago - Recommended
"...The Goodman Theatre's current production, "Gloria" written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, is a thriller, to say the least. Might I also add that the first act ends more explosively than one might have expected and that as one looking forward to all the puzzle pieces fitting together in the second act, I found myself asking "is that all?". This play, a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer, takes place in New York, at the offices of a magazine publisher. Smoothly directed by Evan Cabinet, who has his entire original company from New York in Chicago, the characters are all involved with their "careers", attaining higher status than their co-workers and of course, being popular amongst their peers and bosses."
Chicago Theatre Review - Highly Recommended
"...Violence has become so commonplace in today's world that its sudden appearance at first shocks and then ultimately fades into our memory. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' latest play is a sly combination of dark comedy and shrewd observation of a toxic work environment and sudden, gut-wrenching tragedy. Audiences will either love this comic drama or hate it. It unfolds in a polished production that will initially upset audiences. This play will undoubtedly be the subject of controversy and spark much conversation, but one thing is certain: this is an excellent show that will be difficult to forget."
Third Coast Review - Recommended
"...Director Evan Cabnet staged the premiere of Gloria at the Vineyard Theatre in New York in 2015. He moved that production, cast intact, to the Goodman stage. The performances are excellent and clearly benefit by their work together in the past. The characters in act one appear again, some of them multiple times, in act two with modified names and appearances. (Only Lorin appears in both acts as the same person.) But the fact that we know who they were before becomes an underlying joke."
Picture This Post - Recommended
"...GLORIA is by turns enlightening and distasteful as it shows the zeal with which writers will seize a terrible narrative for their own purposes. As these unhappy Millennials demonstrate, their generation views a job as a lily pad from which to launch their next jump. Unfortunately, as GLORIA also shows, they learned this from the generations that preceded them."
Splash Magazine - Recommended
"..."Gloria", a 2016 Pulitzer finalist in drama, by playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, is a disturbing and thought-provoking piece on the meaning of morals and fame in modern publishing. It's a play that contains a shocking twist, spot-on acting and tight direction."
NewCity Chicago - Recommended
"...In truth, I’m a little dismayed with my ability to summarize this complex and truly vital play. I feel similarly about the people I overheard in the lobby after the mortifying first act describing what they saw as “interesting.” How impressively capable we are of managing trauma. Or perhaps, more frighteningly, how great is our capacity to detach and defer emotionally. “Gloria” will stay with me for a long time as I think it will for many. Because, as the play subtly posits, the Gloria herein may very well live in each one of us."
