Chicago Tribune - Recommended
"...You really must hear Schmidt’s new score. It is a dazzling formative match for Shaw. With extensive use of staccato and pizzicato whimsy, he embodies, musically, Shaw’s famous sense of humor at the expense of pompous British characters. At other moments, Schmidt seems take a page out of the Church of England hymnal, with strong, full, ecclesiastic chords that are just perfect for an 1898 play that deals with affairs of the heart in a parsonage."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...Then there is composer Joshua Schmidt, who last year enjoyed success here and in New York with his first chamber musical, "Adding Machine." Schmidt is a magician. If "Adding Machine" was all dissonance and jagged edges, "A Minister's Wife" is all heat and light, with hints of hymns and five-part harmonies, and complex chamber music, as well as a hint of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. And while Schmidt has truly found a way to make Shaw's dialogue sing, Jan Tranen has matched him by penning extraordinarily sophisticated lyrics -- at once subtle and feverish -- that take their cue from the sermons, poems, debates, conversations and love letters of the Victorian period."
The Wall Street Journal - Highly Recommended
"...Mr. Schmidt first came to the attention of New York audiences two seasons ago with his score for “Adding Machine,” a musical so glitteringly crafted that I initially took its self-assurance for glibness. No one will make that mistake about the music that Mr. Schmidt has written for “A Minister’s Wife.” Atop a crisply chattering minimalist-style instrumental accompaniment that evokes the typewriter used by Morell’s secretary to transcribe his sermons, Mr. Schmidt flings long, tender arcs of melody that cling to the ear like phrases from old love letters. The results are at once strongly contemporary and immediately engaging."
Pioneer Press - Highly Recommended
"...Like his previous, atonally tricky, aurally challenging work, "A Minister's Wife" at Writers' Theatre, skirts over the edges of the sublime with a score that imbues George Bernard Shaw's psychologically fraught story with layer upon layer of sonic ingenuity. You won't leave the production humming the score: Schmidt is a man of anti-melodies, shunning familiar chord structures in favor of notes tumbling together in unexpected collisions. But you will emerge from this 90-minute piece with a rich understanding of the title character's dilemma, her maid Prossie's infamous complaint and the emotional fallout of a headlong, headstrong freefall into passion."
Chicago Reader - Somewhat Recommended
"...Much pared down from Shaw's 1898 Candida, it's an only intermittently successful little thing about a self-satisfied churchman who becomes unsettled when a charming young poet starts wooing his wife. But every now and then, when it makes use of My Fair Lady's secret, it can be lovely. Michael Halberstam directs a marvelous cast supported by an excellent live quartet of musicians."
Windy City Times - Highly Recommended
"...the heart of the production comes with the main triangle of Fry's Candida, Gudahl's Morell and Schmuckler's Marchbanks. Each shows the drastic emotional stakes that come when their love and fidelity is tested, both in emotionally-wracked spoken and operatically sung dialogue."
Time Out Chicago - Recommended
"...Halberstam’s production is handsome if somewhat static (the cast may wear grooves into Brian Sidney Bembridge’s floor trodding the same paths among declamatory points A, B and C). As James, Gudahl puts his usual mannerisms to good effect, reduced to blubbering by the merest hint of doubt about his wife’s affections; Schmuckler matches Shaw’s physical description of Marchbanks to a T and sings gorgeously, but brings an odd note of menace with his awkwardness. Fry, though, captivates. In a deliciously shrewd, warm, gorgeously sung turn as Candida, she’s a worthy center of attention."
ChicagoCritic - Highly Recommended
"...A Minister’s Wife is a treasure of a show that begs to be seen. I can’t remember seeing such a fabulous new and original chamber operetta. This astonishing show is a master work of high musical art. It is a flawless production."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Somewhat Recommended
"...In the classic "My Fair Lady," Lerner and Loewe took Shaw's satire of the British class system and turned it into one of the finest and best loved traditional book musicals of all time. Anyone who remembers the wildly unconventional "The Adding Machine" knows that Composer Josh Schmidt is no traditionalist. While his earlier work was a great critical and commercial success, I found the dissonant, atonal score a liability. And while his score for "A Minister's Wife" is at least less cloying to the ear, this modern chamber operetta is perhaps better suited to lovers of high art than popular appeal."
