Hank Williams: Lost Highway presented by American Blues Theater at The Greenhouse Theater Center

Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended

"...Kiely wisely gives more focus to one of the other unusually potent assets of this particular piece: an attempt, more than you find in most jukebox treatments, to understand just what Williams and his music meant to the ordinary Americans who sat by their radios, back before the raw, blues-like music from Caucasians who grew up in the hills was turned into the political and cultural commodity branded as country. The show uses the potentially hoary device of having the African-American blues singer Tee-Tot (played here by John Crowley) act as a kind of ghostly influence from Williams' youth, but Crowley and Kiely downplay the cliches and somehow make that work, not least because Crowley just grabs the character by the scruff of the neck and wails."

Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended

"...Matthew Brumlow is superb in this affecting chronicle of the turbulent life of the great country singer-songwriter Hank Williams, who died in 1953, at age 29, from heart failure brought on by too much pills and liquor. Under the guidance of director Damon Kiely and musical director Malcolm Ruhl, Brumlow uncannily re-creates Williams's expressive yodeling style, demonstrating the deeply personal way Williams melded hillbilly and black blues influences in such classic tunes as "Your Cheatin' Heart," "Long Gone Lonesome Blues," and "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry.""

Around The Town Chicago - Highly Recommended

"...It is not often that a production is so well received that it is the audience that forces the theater company to "bring it back". Thus is the case with the remount of American Blues Theater's "Hank Williams: Lost Highway", now on stage at The Greenhouse Theater Center. This production was a smash hit and I, for one, am very glad that they brought it back. Let me explain. Awhile back, another company did a splendid production of this musical biography written by Randal Myler and Mark Harelik that tells the story of music legend Hank Williams, who changed the sounds we listened to before his tragic (and very early) death at 29 years of age."

Chicago Theatre Review - Highly Recommended

"...A welcomed return to Chicago, this musical tells the story of one of America’s true musical geniuses. It will charm and enlighten audiences, both those who love his tunes like “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and “Hey, Good Lookin’,” as well as those unfamiliar with the young singer/composer. Williams’ struggle with pain, drugs and booze is sad but its his music that makes this production so special. This wonderful cast will send playgoers home with a smile on their faces and a song in their hearts."

The Fourth Walsh - Highly Recommended

"...HANK WILLIAMS: LOST HIGHWAY is a poetic testimony to what launches and destroys a brilliant career. Hank’s story will have you musing and humming all the way home."

Splash Magazine - Highly Recommended

"...The effect that Hank Williams had on the listener is illustrated well in a couple of scenes involving Dana Black as a waitress. In soliloquy, Black perfectly expounds on a certain type of loneliness whose salvation can only be found in a Cadillac with wheels so round it is as if they are not touching the ground. Later she meets the legend and has a whirlwind adventure that ends only when Hank’s Cadillac runs out of gas. In the end Hank Williams also ran out of gas and we are forever grasping at the fumes he left behind."