Chicago Tribune - Recommended
"...Vitalist Theatre's production doesn't boast the klieg-light appeal of Meryl Streep, who just played the title role for the New York Shakespeare Festival. But Elizabeth Carlin-Metz's canny staging and her smart and assured ensemble deliver a powerful, if occasionally exhausting, journey with Anna Fierling and her doomed trio of children through an Everyland torn apart equally by war and greed."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...Director Elizabeth Carlin-Metz, a teacher at Knox College, has arrived in Chicago with a Vitalist Theatre production each fall for years now, and they are invariably smart, original and bold in their use of movement and music. Her "Mother Courage" -- with a vivid, caustic, unfussy translation by British playwright David Hare -- is another splendid piece of work."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...The resulting play is tragically topical--eclectic, stylized, and riveting in Elizabeth Carlin-Metz's staging for Vitalist Theatre. Making the hardest bargains possible and thriving on others' misery, our antiheroine sacrifices everything that matters to survive for nothing. Lori Myers as this "hyena of the battlefield" is relentless, and so are Kevin O'Donnell's Stomp-like score and set designer Craig Choma's assemblage of dadaist detritus."
Windy City Times - Recommended
"...director Elizabeth Carlin-Metz has drilled her athletic ensemble to razor-edged precision. Lori Myers, youthful physique notwithstanding, engages our sympathies as the amoral Mother Courage, while Kelly Lynn Hogan’s Kattrin projects a mighty-mouse spunkiness that likewise wins our support. A company of versatile character players—Rom Barkhordar, Winston Evans, Vincent L. Lonergan, Anne Sheridan Smith, Christopher Hibbard and Jeremy Clark—zip through an array of distinctive personae and dialects so seamlessly that we are astounded, at curtain call, to see only eight people emerge to take their well-deserved bows."
Gay Chicago Magazine - Highly Recommended
"...Turn off the trivial distractions of mainstream media and allow your brain the opportunity to engage in a captivating discourse about our anarchic reality by way of this wonderful and particularly pertinent theatrical treat."
Time Out Chicago - Recommended
"...What’s good about Vitalist’s storefront revival is that its stripped-stage approach puts the focus on the text, while a modest use of STOMP-style percussion (aggressively drummed on designer Craig Choma’s sprawling, junk-draped warehouse scaffolding) regularly pricks us to keep us engaged."
ChicagoCritic - Recommended
"...Mother Courage is a long and somewhat plodding show that contains some unsteady accents (especially from Winston Evans who goes from Scottish to Irish to American hillbilly) but ultimately it delivers a sort of surreal epic that engages us and delivers a special night of theatre. The energy of the cast, the craftsmanship of the production and the tone of the play is moving. The worthy message comes over loud and clear as Vitalist Theatre of Chicago’s powerful show gets us thinking about the global conflicts that haunt us today."
