Chicago Tribune - Recommended
"...The performances are stellar across the board here. Meyer's Mike shows us just enough flashes of charm and wit for us to understand how he managed to sweet-talk his way out of trouble. However, the repetitions of his final moments before getting in the car need more emotional amplification in Shuchman's staging."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"... Suffice to say that the cliche about parenthood is true: it's absolutely as if your heart were running around loose in someone else's body. Laura Jacqmin not only names the dread something in Look, We Are Breathing, her new play, receiving an effective world premiere production now at Rivendell Theatre. She reprises its unfolding for us again and again."
Time Out Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...As his mother, his frustrated English teacher (Lily Mojekwu), and the shy girl (Brenann Stacker) with whom he hooked up on the night of his death reflect in alternating monologues on Mike’s impact on their lives, Megan Schuchman’s spare, in-the-round staging for Rivendell’s premiere keeps us close enough to share their mix of grief and grievances. Meyer, meanwhile, rides a careful line between swagger and repugnance. Jacqmin’s requiem for a teenage dirtbag subverts the usual questions about loss of young life and lost potential; this kid seems to have done his best to lose his potential while alive."
ChicagoCritic - Highly Recommended
"...Megan Shuchman's directing in Rivendell's intimate space allows the actresses to directly address the audience in a conversational manner. For long stretches of the play Mike sits in the center under their and our observation, alone except for Mike Mroch's simple, flexible set. Each of the women has their own display on the wall, showing plastic cups, plates, or books from which they enter the playing space, first with Mike, and then alone to describe things that happened after he died, in a sort of ritualistic purging. Rivendell is a company devoted to women's experiences, and what the women in this story have to grapple with is that Mike's only intimate relationships were with other guys."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Recommended
"...Director Megan Shuchman is obviously adept at directing in the round, but she is also aided wonderfully by minimalistic set design by Mike Mroch, beautiful light design by Diane Fairchild, and outstanding sound design by Christopher Kriz. Together they created a lovely world that shifted quickly from direct address and interactive storytelling to flashback scenes to surreal moments of reality slipping just a bit out of focus. The stark minimalism truly allowed for Shuchman to focus the audience on the actors. With this play being so much about how these three women are feeling, not having a ton of set pieces and allowing the actors to go around and look into the audience’s eyes gave everyone permission to experience the intensely intimate journey that these women were going on."
Around The Town Chicago - Recommended
"...Rivendell Theatre Ensemble is one of our "storefront"/ "black-box" theaters where every time you enter, you are surprised to see where the stage is and where the seating is arranged. That is part of the adventure of our smaller companies. Rivendell is also dedicated in producing new works with "women at the core" and such is their latest entry, a World Premiere, written by Chicago playwright Laura Jacqmin, "look, we are breathing"."
Chicago Theatre Review - Recommended
"...aybe the show will make you think pretty hard about our attempts to ignore the faults of the deceased. It’s a performance for people that want to think. Megan Shuchman’s directing style fits well to the script, giving a quick pace to a show that, really, is a series of monologues. It flows as a connected piece of theatre, if a brief one. In short, it presented an engaging idea that I wanted to see explored, and did so in an interesting way. Not a supremely memorable way, but an interesting one. It’s worth your time to check out, and certainly worth Rivendell’s time to present this inaugural production of it, before it continues its journey through workshops and revisions. After all, I wouldn’t want to see this potential go to waste."
