Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"...Director Joe Jahraus' Profiles production is exceptionally well-acted by all four of the performers. Many plays like this one avoid showing the kid. Not here. In fact, the fifth-grader Killian Hughes turns in one heck of a scary performance, adding complex notes of sadness and, creepily, pent-up anger. The play requires you to think that Daniel may erupt at any moment and eat his parents (or the weird nanny) alive. And with Hughes, you're always on your guard."
Chicago Sun Times - Somewhat Recommended
"...Despite its perky title, this play is one of the most disturbing studies of emotional child abuse around, and well before it's all over your strongest impulse might be to contact Great Britain's Child Protective Services agency. You might also add Harris' play to the growing list of those that deal with mothers who clearly were not meant to have children. The father here is certainly no angel, either. Nor, as it turns out, is the newly arrived nanny."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...The women's adversarial, All About Eve dynamic initially feels stale, but Harris takes the story in an unexpected direction by delving into the housewife's profound dissatisfaction with motherhood. As the focus of the play shifts, we get an honest and bracing debunking of the myth that all women instinctually find changing diapers fulfilling. In Joe Jahraus's fast-paced, high-intensity staging, the excellent Sarah Chalcroft plays the unhappy mom like a trapped animal-panicky, prone to lashing out, and radiating indignation from every pore."
Windy City Times - Recommended
"...Now some might try to write off Our New Girl as just a domestic drama involving overly privileged people. But Harris incisively explores the different kinds of scarring that can occur when parental instincts stubbornly refuse to kick in and how difficult it is to be caught up in all that. If anything, Our New Girl should make anyone rethink the risks when it comes to starting a new family, no matter how poor or privileged you may be."
Edge - Highly Recommended
"...Profiles Theatre offers Chicago audience's a worthy end to its season with the Midwest premiere of "Our New Girl," by Irish playwright Nancy Harris, directed by Profiles co-artistic director Joe Jahraus. An unblinking look at a family torn by its own unrealistic expectations of life, career, and parenthood, "Our New Girl" is a must see."
ChicagoCritic - Somewhat Recommended
"...This play comes off as an artificial work almost devoid of reality. How could a super-smart lawyer be so clueless about her husband? In reality, Hazel would never let Annie stay in her house even on the first day."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Highly Recommended
"...There is a dreamlike-or perhaps more appropriately, nightmarish-quality to Our New Girl achieved through Joe Jahraus' unobtrusive direction and masterful attention to detail. Unlike the family in question, everything here works in concordance. Jessica Fialko's lighting is moody and lends this middle class British home the feeling of a haunted house. Jeffrey Levin and Oliver Hickman's music and sound design are reminiscent of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' soundtrack work for David Fincher. Melody decays ominously into pure noise as the actors move with slight abstraction between scenes. Our New Girl is the kind of fully realized, small stage work that one has come to expect from Profiles. It is not to be missed by anyone, mothers included."
Around The Town Chicago - Recommended
"...Nancy Harris’ “Our New Girl” is a mysterious play, perhaps a little too mysterious, with a little too much going on, and while “Profiles Theatre” production boasts extremely strong performances by the actors which manage to keep the audience engaged and do ultimately hold the show together, as well tense and affecting blocking, the direction (Joe Jahraus) sometimes falls down at the level of dialogue because it is spoken so quickly that, at times, it could barely be understood through the foreign dialects. Also, the velocity at which the dialogue was being spoken (a problem in the Jahraus’s staging of The Cryptogram” last year) left one wondering if he doesn’t have a rather idiosyncratic aesthetic paradigm for, and definition of, suspense."
Chicago Theatre Review - Highly Recommended
"...Nancy Harris’ taut, new drama is a chilling look at modern parenting and family relationships. In this sensational production, Profiles Theatre presents another stylishly directed, gorgeously designed and honestly acted play that will draw audiences in from the very first mysterious moments. In a play that will provide chills on a warm, summer night, this provocative, psychological thriller is suspenseful, sharp and highly polished, just like all those butcher knives that are within such easy reach."
Chicagoland Theater Reviews - Somewhat Recommended
"...“Our New Girl” may have its critical advocates but I thought drama was overwrought and improbable, flitting from social problem to domestic crisis and back again. The character of Hazel has a few fierce and tearful arias that Chalcroft handles well, suggesting she belongs in a more deserving British play, like “The Herd” now on triumphant display at the Steppenwolf Theatre. But the sound and fury of “Our New Girl” wears on the viewer. We should be stirred and disturbed and maybe a little frightened. Instead, I fidgeted."
The Fourth Walsh - Highly Recommended
"...What we get instead in this riveting two hours of theater is tremendous, soul-baring acting from Chalcroft and Canfield (although a moment in which Chalcroft screams into a dishtowel is one of the most casually horrific things I've seen on a Chicago stage in years). In service of Harris' carefully-honed script, director Joe Jahraus patiently paces these performances and builds these resentments and conflicts to their ultimate explosions."
