Chicago Tribune - Recommended
"..."The Aliens" needs a gentle, delicate production, and for the most part, it gets one here from the director Shade Murray, who forges quite a rich little show. Haggard is perhaps a little too wise and worldly for Jasper, but the performance is suffused with honesty. So is the work of Finley, a Northwestern University student who truly is pitch-perfect here as a shy, sensitive kid right on the cusp of that moment when, although we so rarely realize it at the time, we make crucial decisions about life paths that determine so much of our future. For "The Aliens" to work, you have to never quite know what Evan will become, and so it goes here."
Chicago Reader - Recommended
"...Despite impeccably nuanced performances from Brad Akin and Steve Haggard, their serial self-indulgence has little dramatic import-a problem compounded by director Shade Murray's overly measured pacing. KJ nevertheless earns his place onstage. In a masterful theatrical coup that provides a finale well worth the wait, Baker has him unwittingly shepherd the third character-groping, friendless teen coffee shop employee Evan-to tenuous safety. Michael Finley's Evan is a canny, elegant portrait of youth poised before oblivion."
Windy City Times - Recommended
"...This is not such a production. Director Shade Murray is not afraid to dispense with actorly artifice to confront the tragedy of creative potential lacking the tools to express itself, and has instructed Steve Haggard, Brad Akin and Michael Finley to play these social waifs every bit as repressed and inarticulate as Baker has conceived them. Their leisurely delivery, designed to while away the endless days, may present a challenge to our patience, but theatergoers willing to stay the course will be rewarded with a vivid portrait of post-adolescent anomie in America today."
Time Out Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...Director Shade Murray and his fierce cast lean hard into Baker’s lulls, embracing the script’s silences to the point of occasional discomfort. Yet audience members who go along with this small, still story will undoubtedly be moved by its subtle portrayal of how even the slightest intimation of acceptance can change an individual’s trajectory."
Stage and Cinema - Somewhat Recommended
"...Director Shade Murray, who specializes in plays about disaffected oddballs and perplexed adolescents, certainly captures the dead-end desperation of these alienated and marginalized young men (a la Eric Bogosian's subUrbia). What he can't supply is what the playwright didn't: A reason to care. It's way too easy to see who and what these guys are. But asking us to guess at what they were or still might be is an act of faith the play shouldn't ask an enervated audience. It's just too little for two hours."
ChicagoCritic - Recommended
"...The acting is disciplined and fully internalized. Steve Haggard is charming as Jasper; Michael Finely is the shy, tentative introvert struggling to have friends and find his place in the world. Without giving away much more, let me state that Evan and J.K. form a special bond based on mutual respect and genuine friendship. While this play takes extreme patience, one we get hooked, the subtly of the work delivers an engrossing evening of theatre. The line between genius and insanity and between death and life are blended into a compelling story with three memorable characters. Stay with The Aliens, it'll be worth it."
Chicagoland Theater Reviews - Recommended
"...Annie Baker's "The Aliens" is an engrossing and poignant play of deceptive simplicity, or it's two pointless hours in the company of tedious characters doing nothing and going nowhere. The success or failure of the play is all in the eye, and patience, of the beholder."
