Out Of The Blue presented by Organic Theater Company at The Greenhouse Theater Center

Chicago Reader - Somewhat Recommended

"...There's a lot of truth and compassion in Will Burdin's performance as a teenager navigating the complications of gay life (girlfriend "beards," zealot grandparents, shallow hookups), but the script is such an overlong and dramaturgically clumsy affair that the most devastating moments become the most tedious."

Windy City Times - Recommended

"...With its U.S. debut of Out of the Blue, Organic Theater shares a vital piece of theater that hopefully will have an effect in changing hearts and minds in Russia. And it is best not to become complacent that things are all that fine here in the United States, since much of the anti-gay Russian bile spilled in Out of the Blue is also still spewed in this country, too."

ChicagoCritic - Highly Recommended

"...n act two, we see how much the parents try to ‘convert’ Boy by setting him up with a hooker and ultimately sending him to a medical clinic for addicts to drug him into submission. This act is scary as we see how Russia is destroying youthful gay boys. We see, one again, how parents don’t really live their children if they put limits on that love. Love is unconditional or it isn’t love. Period."

NewCity Chicago - Recommended

"...There is no such thing as love in this world. Poets, more than anyone, know that this is true, because they invented it, and, capitulating to the inevitable, called themselves realists in order to give themselves license to mediate the dismantling of their invention. Homophobia is just a byproduct of this anxiety about love, this need to assert, define and then ravage that darling of human civilization, that mirage of no substance, that sick paste that barely holds together the twin oppressions, one spiritual, one legislative, of monogamy and marriage. Vladimir Zaytsev’s “Out of the Blue,” presented for the first time in the United States in a translation by Tatyana Khaikin and Robert Duffley, is a monolithic examination of the western obsession with love through the lens of homosexuality and homophobia, executed with lighthearted, penetrating skill by Organic Theater Company."