| Time Out Chicago - Recommended
"...the director and her designers supply the evening’s vital force. Hutchinson could have easily relied on her venue’s Oxbridge-like wood paneling for old-world ambience. Instead, she uses frenetic nightclub lighting and a bit of forced audience movement to transform two compact rooms into several wide-ranging locales. These techniques plus some booming hipster music compel us onto our toes—exactly where we must be to absorb Thursday’s onslaught of twists and turns."
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Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...Jessica Hutchinson's inventive staging and an agile ensemble find the right balance between the ridiculous masquerades of the anarchists (one in full Cyrano regalia) and the chilling realization that, once unmasked by the world, none of us knows what our next step should be."
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NewCity Chicago - Recommended
"...In contrast to such uncertain subterfuges, Bilal Dardai’s adaptation is heavy-handed at best, and he’s added far too many scenes of exposition and explanation that detract from the beautiful peculiarity and mystery, not to mention incredible rhetoric of paranoia, of the story. In contrast, Jessica Hutchinson’s directing is hip, astute and responsive, with a semi-promenade that makes brilliant use of space and has actors circulating amongst the audience without any sense of clumsy attempts at “interactivity.” Acting is deft across the board, and the quicksilver pacing, along with gorgeous technical theater, keeps the play afloat—even the facile last scene Dardai added that makes a vapid reference to terrorism (not to mention completely compromises Chesterton’s message) remains buoyant in the hands of director and cast."
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Chicago Free Press - Highly Recommended
"...There’s no doubt about the determination of New Leaf’s promenade production. A lot of loving ardor went into every aspect of this disciplined deception (with the exception of some unfortunate accents). Dan Granata plays the detective who masquerades as a revolutionary with all the calculated astonishment that the role requires. He takes us through this warren of a plot with the same precision that Chesterton showed his readers 101 years ago. Let’s hear it for thinking theater!"
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Centerstage - Highly Recommended
"...Throughout, the greatest pleasure of the play is its language. In adapting the novel for the stage, playwright Bilal Dardai has wisely retained the complexity and richness of Chesterton's literary prose; the result is something between play and novel, with dialogue doing the work of narration and narration infused with the urgency and responsiveness of dialogue. In the climactic final scenes, the play's intellectual and moral underpinnings emerge from under all the virtuosic verbiage."
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ChicagoCritic - Not Recommended
"...The over acting and over-the-top performances by several players hurt the production. Bad accents, rushed speech patterns and awkward scene changes didn’t help. The show simply tried to do too much and collapsed on its own weight. A trimmed down, more focused point of view would serve this show well. As it now plays, it is more of an endurance battle than entertaining theatre."
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