The Inside at The Greenhouse Theater Center

Chicago Tribune - Recommended

"...It's a supercharged, hyperliterate and often very funny journey, and Ellis commits with joyous, if sometimes raw, energy and passion. I didn't see the multiactor version, but placing all the voices that have guided Emma - and sometimes almost torn her up - within one performer underscores the complexity and complications of life as a smart and sensitive black woman. Diamond's Emma may have the "independence of the invisible," but "The Inside" makes it painfully clear that it comes at a palpable cost."

Chicago Reader - Somewhat Recommended

"...The problem with this one-woman play from Lydia R. Diamond isn't that it fails to make a compelling commentary on a black woman's struggle within an all-white community—it does. The problem is that the play fails to build on that commentary, instead getting stuck in fragmented thoughts about gender and race that don't really fully develop or resolve by the narrative's end."

Windy City Times - Recommended

"...The music of Red Clay ( featuring Reggie Lawrence on jazz guitar ) contributes a gently lulling soundscape to locate us in our rarified surroundings, but the evening belongs to Kristin E. Ellis, who engages the audience-sometimes on their own turf-with articulate insight for a full 90 minutes devoid of stumbles, hesitations or pauses for rehydration. The results not only encapsulate a milieu nowadays all but lost to nostalgic memory, but offer a glimpse of the author's cosmological indecision in the years before she became the celebrated playwright we know today."

ChicagoCritic - Recommended

"...This story can provide some insight into the minds of people who don’t talk about themselves much. That Emma isn’t a uniquely fascinating person or in a particularly perilous situation is the point, not a failure of the artists’ vision. It may mean the play is not for you, though. If you go, enjoy the journey to another person’s planet. Judi Dench’s character in Notes on a Scandal has a line about bonding with people by sharing an ability to “see through the quotidian awfulness of things.” Lydia Diamond’s script will share the same with you."