Chicago Reader
- Not Recommended
"...Imagine what would happen if Michael, the molting angel from the 1996 John Travolta movie, had fallen from the skies into that little Appalachian hamlet in Deliverance where the kid plays banjo and met up with the sick-fuck family from Sam Shepard's Buried Child. Can't? Keith Huff's festival of redneck cliches gives a rough approximation of what it might be like, even adding in the odd motif from The Petrified Forest and The Beverly Hillbillies."
Windy City Times
- Somewhat Recommended
"...Keith Huff has a play going to Broadway this fall, so it's instructive to recall that in 1989, this prolific Chicago playwright composed an old-fashioned morality fable steeped in the bucolic fairy-tale lore so beloved of urban authors. But while the number of modern American dramas set in short-order eateries are surpassed only by those located in likewise remote hotels, bus stations and taverns ( the better to keep the dramatic microcosm at once varied and stationary ) , this is a genre rapidly approaching its expiration date as anything but a rite-of-passage exercise for writing workshops. Add in the propensity of young authors to overstate their case, and what we're left with in 2009 is a scenario as anonymously shopworn as the mid-'50s pop tunes on Zesto's jukebox."
Chicago Free Press
- Somewhat Recommended
"...The playwright certainly has an ear for tough talk and barnyard bravado. Unfortunately, Huff is too successful at exposing the pointlessness of poverty. Sure these nasty hicks don’t deserve the intercession of an angel—which is no doubt the play’s point. But, combining with Huff’s “Deliverance” dialogue, Carlo Lorenzo Garcia’s uncompassionate staging can’t convince us that the supposed redemption of these “mud people” is real, let alone just."
Centerstage
- Somewhat Recommended
"...Strange and fantastical as the writing should be (given the absurdity of the plot), the message falls flat thanks to predictable insights and characters that, even in the hands of a talented actors (who work as hard as James Brown to bring them to life), never quite develop. Huff's usual dark use of comedy ("The Bird and Mr. Banks") is hardly present on stage, though director Carlo Lorenzo Garcia's somber interpretation could be to blame."
Chicago Stage Review
- Somewhat Recommended
"...The individual aspects of this production are excellent but this time out, Mary-Arrchie has taken their intense capacity for creating uniquely incredible theater and tossed it in the mud."
Time Out Chicago
- Somewhat Recommended
"...This ludicrous ultra-gothic might have worked if suitably camped up, but Mary-Arrchie’s production plays it fatally straight. Bolduc labors mightily to locate an emotional arc in the thankless role of Barb, the world-weary waitress given to such observations as “angels don’t want no cages.” As the scurrilous Mitchley, Cotovsky answers the long-standing question, “What if Mel from the ’70s staple Alice were not so much grouchy as psychotic?” William Anderson’s set is lovely to look at, a picture of slow decay with a working grill, but its meticulous realism can’t keep this production from feeling utterly synthetic: an idea of a play standing in for a play itself."
