Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"... Created by Neo-Futurist Jay Torrence, the show takes its central tragedy seriously while dousing it in a wonderfully strange, sharply comic mood. (Torrence achieved a similar tone with "Roustabout," his 2006 play about a massive circus train fire.) At the show's outset, the sounds of children singing a melancholy tune fill the air. It takes a moment until you realize the song is Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Both Kays and Torrence have gone to this pop-music well in the past, but never have the lyrics hit with such punch: "With the lights out, it's less dangerous/ Here we are now, entertain us." It's downright menacing, and Hays slyly cuts the tension by transitioning into Wax Audio's mashup of "Teen Spirit" and hair-band stylings of Europe's "The Final Countdown." The whole thing smacks of a wonderful sort of weirdness —abrasive, funny and accessibly avant-garde."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...This enthralling 90-minute piece is the work of writer-actor Jay Torrence, whose sly, poignant, poetic script has been directed by Halena Kays with an almost balletic flair. It is no documentary, yet the richly expressionistic rendering of the story brings the crucial facts into full focus through the perspectives of its six characters (all expertly played), who emerge, phantomlike, from black plastic body bags scattered on the floor of the ashen stage."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...Halena Kays's pitch-perfect direction makes the uproarious comedy (a breakneck demonstration of the Neo-Futurarium's own fire exits) and unbearable poignancy (Leah Urzendowski as a doomed aerialist, Ryan Walters as comedian Eddie Foy) equally memorable. A grim antidote to holiday faux-cheer, Burning Bluebeard celebrates the ephemeral in life and onstage."
Centerstage - Somewhat Recommended
"... I’ve been a fan of the Neo-Futurists since I was scarcely older than a lot of the kids who attended Bluebeard that afternoon. And a lot of the reasons for that are on display here. The performers here are masters of low budget pageantry which they display with wit and passion. However, all the finely calibrated whimsy of this overstuffed production began to wear me down early on. The various strands of performance never gell into a narrative and that’s fine, they don’t have to. The problem is that they keep trying."
Chicago Stage Review - Highly Recommended
"...Burning Bluebeard is theater at its smartest. It is laugh-out-loud funny. It is tearfully heartrending. It is theater at its most entertaining, spellbinding and surprising. It is the finest example of how staged storytelling at its best is the more effective than any other delivery device. It presents unthinkable loss that transcends time and creates a cathartic exorcism of this tragedy through a stylized emotional connection to the lives that were shattered and lost."
Chicago On the Aisle - Highly Recommended
"...The six actors are a bedraggled troupe of clowns, their costumes singed and smudged. Most of them are accomplished tumblers, denizens of the absurd world of the stage where nothing is real and every scene and line resonates with the comedy we all live. They are sensitive souls, these poor creatures seemingly trapped in a memory loop of the Iroquois fire. Though they speak, their eloquent faces and elaborate physicality – sometimes slapstick, sometimes airily graceful — lend their words much deeper levels of meaning."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Highly Recommended
"...The acrobatic and supple cast--Anthony Courser, Dean Evans, Molly Plunk, Torrence, Leah Urzendowski and Ryan Walters—play Iroquois survivors ranging from the headliner and Chicago favorite Eddy Foy to an aerialist (the one performer to die in the blaze), stage crewman, Fairy Queen, clown artist, or appalled audience member. Handing out presents to audience members (which will be opened to present keys to the “Bluebeard” scenes they reenact), the cast absorb the audience into the action, with one playing the unluckiest little boy in Chicago (who turns out to be the luckiest as well)."
Let's Play at ChicagoNow - Highly Recommended
"...Clever creator and narrator Jay Torrence says it best with the statement, ‘we theatre people love our stories within stories.‘ It’s true! I love when shows take a creative angle in telling a true tale. Inspired by real people and events, Torrence pens a loving and comical tribute to an American horror story. It’s been nearly 118 years. It’s not ‘too soon’ to laugh... and heartily. BURNING BLUEBEARD is a big fireball of entertainment. You’ll only get burned if you don’t see it!"
Chicago Theater Beat - Highly Recommended
"... Toward the end of the play the performers describe, in beautiful and heartbreaking terms, the events of December 30, 1903, ending in a moment that transports the audience to the Iroquois Theatre on that fateful night; when the house lights come up, audible sniffles can be heard in the audience. This is a holiday story unlike any other: it is performed in a way that is equal parts reverent and irreverent; it is part of our history as Chicagoans, as theatergoers, and as human beings. The final performance of this show will take place on December 30 – the 108th year anniversary of the Iroquois fire; I can’t think of a more fitting end date for this unusual and lyrical play."
