Chicago Tribune - Recommended
"...The play is full of odious characters. In Fall’s restless but metaphorically sound hands, they’re all trapped in an arid landscape like purty little American rats, copulating, fighting, killing, expiring, striving. Their antics are not for the faint."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...Realism it most certainly is not. But with his grandly operatic production of “Desire Under the Elms” — the centerpiece of the Goodman Theatre’s multi-faceted exploration of the work of Eugene O’Neill — director Robert Falls has given us a founding myth of the American family written in the most gargantuan terms. Think O’Neill on steroids."
Daily Herald - Highly Recommended
"...As resolute and unrelenting as his version of "King Lear" from several years ago, Falls' "Desire" is never less than engrossing. In a production where sound and vision - an overwhelming set; farmhouse looming above the stage; a Bob Dylan tune injected into Richard Woodbury's plaintive, foreboding score - threaten to overshadow the acting, this skilled ensemble maintains their grip."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...This Desire Under the Elms is explicitly modeled for a 21st-century audience, desensitized by Nancy Grace-style sensationalism and therefore unlikely to be fazed by the atrocity Abbie commits to maintain her position. So perhaps it makes sense for Falls to focus on overarching metaphors rather than human frailties. Like Olson, we all want the security of home, but reality can crush our domestic illusions like grain between grindstones. The play leaves us to ponder just where we fall on the spectrum between stony self-preservation and the dangers of unbridled emotional vulnerability."
Examiner - Highly Recommended
"...That there are no elms on stage only enhances the tragedy’s power. O’Neill’s description of the title trees demands that they hover with “sinister maternity” – any designer trying to actually capture that in a literal version of a tree will only fail, robbing the text’s most potent symbol of its power. Falls and Dennehy go back decades – this is their fifth production on a Eugene O’Neill work. There’s artistry bordering on magic in the collaboration."
Windy City Times - Somewhat Recommended
"...It all makes for an exciting and memorable theatrical event, but one in which you may feel little connection to the characters. If you do connect, most likely it will be to Falls' visceral vision of shapes, passions and natural forces that predate rational thought."
Chicago Free Press - Highly Recommended
"...Desire Under The Elms,” Eugene O’Neill’s turgid 1924 potboiler, is set in a New England farm in 1850 where a neo-Biblical father and son fight it out for predominance, sexual and proprietary. In this appropriately outsized Goodman Theatre revival their sordid struggle leads to a thrilling end."
EpochTimes - Highly Recommended
"...The shortened version of this play retains all of the power that is O'Neill, with not a wasted moment of the Goodman stage. The set by Walt Spangler is in itself worth the ticket price with a house that is lowered and raised. Michael Philpi's lighting adds to the visuals and the music and sound by Richard Woodbury works to bring this haunting story that extra little something that in most cases is missing. This is O'Neill at its finest!"
Copley News Service - Highly Recommended
"...The Goodman production heightens the play’s sensuality to fever pitch, not only with bits of partial nudity but with some torrid love scenes between Eben and Abbie, fueled by Carla Gugino’s smoldering sensual performance as the young woman. The play ran into censorship problems after it opened in 1924. Those censors would have really flipped at the Goodman interpretation of the script."
Centerstage - Highly Recommended
"...the show is a sight to behold, and the actors, when they're allowed to do their thing unfettered by the show's Broadway-level production values, are pretty impressive. Dennehy, Paolo Shreiber, and the amazing-voiced Carla Gugino are locked in a tempestuous, Oedipal love triangle: cranky old Ephraim Abot (Dennehy) brings home his new wife (Gugino) who promptly seduces Ephraim's gangly son Eban (Schreiber). At stake is not only erotic dominance but control of the Abot family farm itself (though the farm itself is so unappealingly grim in this staging it's hard to see why anyone would want to inherit it at all)."
Edge - Highly Recommended
"...Directed by the Goodman’s own Robert Falls and positioned as the centerpiece of the theatre’s ’global exploration’ of O’Neill’s work, "Desire Under the Elms" is a visceral, visually stunning, and masterfully performed event. Like a Greek nightmare Freud might have, O’Neill blends sex, family, and death in a manner that at first whiff seems familiar but, when given the exceptional treatment it has received by the Goodman, surprises and shocks."
Chicago Stage Review - Somewhat Recommended
"...Everything in the production is powerfully, forcefully and artistically conveyed EXCEPT for the eviscerating reality of how sweet emotions can turn deadly. Without believable chemistry we are left with the actions, void of the emotions. What is sadly lost is the staggering tragedy of passion and love turning so viciously to betrayal, hate and murder."
Time Out Chicago - Somewhat Recommended
"...Falls, it must be noted, has done Chicago legitimate public service this winter with the dynamic global work he has imported and the crop of local fringe troupes he has harvested for his otherwise marvelous O’Neill Festival. But these smaller companies all demonstrate a facility to produce less with more, examples the indulgent Falls doesn’t seem to heed here."
ChicagoCritic - Highly Recommended
"...Dennehy commands the stage in a larger that life performance. He is a marvel. Pablo Schreiber blends tormented rage with pure lust as Eben. Carla Gugino is compelling as the manipulating Abbie. Desire Under Elms is a boldly challenging, large scale theatrical event filled with textured characterizations of flawed people caught in a tragic tangle of destruction. It is an expressionistic triumph."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Recommended
"...Desire Under the Elms" is a dark drama influenced by the hopeless Greek tragedies. The light in this play comes from the spectacular and captivating performances by Carla Guggino, Brian Dennehy, Pablo Schreiber, Boris McGiver and Daniel Stewart Sherman, who become angry, unpredictable people who seize any opportunity to break free from the shackles of their harsh environment. They’re all dangerous and keep the audience on the edge of their seats."
