| Chicago Tribune - Somewhat Recommended
"...What is undeniable is Edmund's gift for creating lyrical interludes in which the characters' past aches and nightmares clash with their current realities. After a hesitant beginning, Buckley's Christopher finds a core of conflicted yearning and fatalism that drives the character's final choices. But this "Southbridge" needs some sturdier narrative underpinnings to really carry it home."
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NewCity Chicago - Somewhat Recommended
"... The playwright’s dialogue tends toward humidity. When Christopher and Lucinda embrace for the first time, a back and forth of soap-operatic scale commences. “No, we can’t!” “I am a widow!” “No one will know!” Perhaps an event of such taboo enormity in the nineteenth century deserves reactions so exploded, but the relationship leading up to that brief sexual congress lacks intensity and spark. Robbie’s formality and Katharine Hepburn brogue are more than appropriate for Lucinda’s upbringing and lifestyle, while Buckley’s stiffness is at a disconnect from the text. Without a magnetic clash of lifestyles, ideas, personalities and backgrounds, the forbidden relationship at the center of Edmund’s play remains too tame."
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Stage and Cinema - Recommended
"... While this is certainly an outlier on the low end, there’s much that’s just underdone; we only get glimpses of genuine urgency, and the whole production is lacking in intensity when compared with how much is supposed to be at stake. The sense, ultimately, is that Southbridge has the makings of a truly great drama, but even with some highly recommended aspects – most notably Robie’s performance – it has yet to achieve its own aspiration for greater depth and scale."
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ChicagoCritic - Recommended
"... In short, there are few easy pleasures to be found in Southbridge, but those willing to peer beyond its sensational surfaces will be invariably rewarded with an intricate and heartfelt theatrical experience."
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