Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"...But it's Hedda's name on the marquee, and it's Fry who'll command your attention with a performance of, truly, international quality, despite its seeming backyard setting, which I mean in all the complexity of that term. On one viewing you'll likely feel like you haven't fully tracked this incredibly smart and vulnerable actress's route through the play, but you know she has a track as clear at the Union Pacific rails that run right outside this theater. Still, Fry and Senior make it clear that she has decided her life is just a role, a character she might play as one way to postpone the blowing out of her brains. For three acts, you watch her try that out. It does not go so well. As well she knows."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...The plays of Henrik Ibsen may be the the bane of high school students and many others far beyond the classroom: Too Nordic Victorian, too stiff, too moralistic. But I would defy anyone lucky enough to catch the Writers Theatre production of "Hedda Gabler" - with its dagger-sharp direction by Kimberly Senior, and its breathtakingly hot-and-cold performance by the impossibly elegant Kate Fry - to make such claims. This is a lip-smackingly delicious, tabloid-worthy show awash in sex-and-power games and self-destruction."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...Even some excellent Heddas lack the color of life. The directors are either overawed by the play's status as a landmark of naturalist theater or determined to beatify the doomed rebels at its core or anxious lest we walk away without having taken Ibsen's feminist point. This staging by Kimberly Senior is up there with—and maybe beyond—the best I've seen, precisely because it doesn't settle for sanctity. Kate Fry is both nasty-funny and ridiculous in the title role—and so pissed off over the horrid pleasantness of her life that her every gesture becomes a howl restrained by decorum. The woman seems this close, at times, to going ninja on her parlor furniture."
Time Out Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...It's the monstrousness of Hedda's actions when she finally, flailingly decides to claim power over another person's fate-that of her former flame, the unrestrained and brilliant Eilert Lovborg (Mark L. Montgomery)-that makes her infuriating and fascinating. In an extraordinary yet unadorned performance, Fry details this balance with breathtaking results: self-involved but lacking self-awareness, flinty but fleetingly vulnerable, her Hedda is coolly captivating, wearing her inscrutability like a cloak against her inability to control her own fate-until she does. Hedda Gabler Tesman may bore herself to death, but Fry's work, and Senior's intimate, intelligent staging, are packed with bracing life."
ChicagoCritic - Highly Recommended
"...Director Kimberly Senior's smart casting produced several fine performances besides the excellent turn from Kate Fry. The rest of the "A" list Equity players include yeoman work from Sean Fortunato, Scott Parkinson and mark Montgomery. Jack Magaw's opulent set and Rachel Laritz's period perfect costumes add flavor to this riveting drama. Ibsen's terrific work is in good hands her. These players put on an 'actor's master class."
Around The Town Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...Writers Theatre, that little jewel in the North Shore's "downtown" Glencoe, just keeps bringing us quality theater, show after show, year after year. Some new works, some musicals and of greatest importance, classic plays, such as their current production, Henrik Ibsen's "Hedda Gabler", a story about a woman that was far ahead of her times. Smoothly directed by Kimberly Senior, this 2 hour and 40 minutes of theater never drags and never seems to bore. There is an old saying that "time flies when you are having fun" and indeed, while the outcome of this story is not one of fun, the trip to its end fits that bill of fare."
Chicagoland Theater Reviews - Highly Recommended
"...The spectator leaves the Writers Theatre pondering just what made Hedda tick. Was she born evil or victimized by a society that denied her legitimate outlets for her energy, or some perverse blend of multiple factors? The revival doesn't sugar coat Hedda's malignity but does give due regard to the social circumstances that drove her into a psychological corner. It is a role Kate Fry was born to play, further enhanced by the superbly well thought out complementary performances. The production concludes on a shocking note that will surprise even those viewers familiar with the play who think they know how it will end."
