Chicago Tribune - Recommended
"...this classy actress with the throaty voice and huge emotional range shows us that Amanda's droll bravado masks a great inner fragility. And it's that mostly pervasive sense of human vulnerability that makes this show worthy and distinctive. As the two haplessly bland second spouses, stuttering foils both, Chaon Cross and Tim Campbell are perfectly splendid, and strikingly sympathetic, in their mutual pique. These roles are typically thankless affairs, but Griffin and these pitch-perfect actors turn them into nuanced, normative characters and apt representatives of our less-than-dramatic selves."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...This production, which might well be Griffin's best work since "The Color Purple," is marred only by his use of distracting musical underscoring. Coward's bristling dialogue is enough music for anyone's ears."
Chicago Reader - Recommended
"...Director Gary Griffin emphasizes the play's knock-down, drag-out quality by seating the audience on all sides of the stage, as at a prize fight, and putting the players on a well-appointed, slowly revolving turntable that has them constantly circling each other. The twirling is slightly nauseating, but the acting is solid. As Elyot and Amanda, Robert Sella and Tracy Michelle Arnold find the right mix of sophistication and jagged edges."
Windy City Times - Recommended
"...The madcap premise for this theater—literally, as well as dramatically, in-the-round—is fulfilled to dazzling perfection in the hands of an ensemble anchored by Tracy Michelle Arnold and Robert Sella as the volatile Amanda and Elyot, augmented by Tim Campbell and Chaon Cross ( the latter a smarter actress than the roles to which her porcelain-doll visage relegates her ) as their mismatched mates, along with a sly cameo by Wendy Robie as the Gallic housekeeper who's seen it all."
Copley News Service - Highly Recommended
"...Gary Griffin directs with a leisurely sense of pace. He injects a full rendition of Coward’s song “Let’s Do It” as a duet for Arnold and Sella, a delightful interpolation. And Griffin gives the final blackout a twist involving Victor and Sybil, though startling, deftly rounds off the play’s romantic fireworks."
Centerstage - Recommended
"...Noel Coward made it all look so easy. He wrote plays with astounding speed ("Private Lives" reportedly took only four days), penned songs by the dozen, and starred in everything he wrote. But producing his exquisitely sophisticated and glamorous plays is far from simple; making the style work requires that every element, from performance to design to pacing, be razor-sharp. And while this production isn't quite perfect, it certainly brings off the tricky balancing act delightfully."
Time Out Chicago - Recommended
"...Griffin’s production features a quartet of finely tuned, masterfully paced performances. Cross and Campbell are stolidly reasonable as the unhappily abandoned new loves, setting the conventional tone against which Arnold’s Amanda and Sella’s Elyot take flight. The latter pair gracefully inhabits the playwright’s neurotic ideal, oscillating between dreamy lassitude and frenetic bickering."
The Onion - Recommended
"...Despite the play’s overarching theme of “love the one you hit,” the Gary Griffin-directed production manages to stay likable because the chemistry between Arnold and Sella feels like it has been stewing for five years. Private Lives is not for everybody—the dialogue feels like an old Hollywood romance—but it's enjoyable despite the exaggerated scenario and characters."
ChicagoCritic - Highly Recommended
"...Private Lives is a terrific romantic comedy that demands and this production has tour de force performances from the entire cast. The sharp chemistry and stinging repertoire from Sella and Arnold anchors this amazingly funny and engaging production. This is world class theatre!"
Chicago Stage and Screen - Highly Recommended
"...There is simply nothing like viewing a work by Noel Coward. His use of the English language and his characters are for an audience the purest work of escapism. We all have things in our lives that make our day just a little hard to get through, but when we meet his characters, we forget what ails us and just let the laughter pour out. In the current production of Noel Coward's "Private Lives" directed flawlessly by Gary Griffin on the main stage of Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier, we are treated to the best of story tellers, a creative director and a sparkling cast."
Chicago Theater Beat - Recommended
"...Private Lives is worthy of its ticket price. It’s Sella’s show, and chemistry or no, he nails the subversive genius of Coward’s wit. Factor in Paul Tazewell’s sleek 1930s costume design (the hats alone are to die for) and you’ve got a production that’s sumptuously handsome. As well as extremely funny."
