Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"..."Pocatello" is enjoying a lovely production by Griffin Theatre and the highly detailed work of director Jonathan Berry. The setting is a chain Italian restaurant, unnamed in the play - presumably for legal reasons - but given the collision of pasta, breadsticks and cheesy faux-Italian decor, we all know it's supposed to be Olive Garden. In a corner therein, we linger with the waitstaff and their mostly broken families, victims all of America's growing income-inequality problem, as well as its abiding rural jobs problem, abiding rural meth problem, and, since there is plenty of blame to go around, their own lack of ambition."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...It is not very often that a character on stage is so real, so bereft, and so lonely that you just want to jump out of your seat and give him a consoling hug. But Eddie, the central character in Samuel D. Hunter's heartbreaking play, "Pocatello" - now in its Midwest premiere by Griffin Theatre - generates just that impulse."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...Samuel D. Hunter presents a more accurate picture in this compassionate, almost unbearably sad play about the waitstaff of what appears to be an Olive Garden in Idaho. Without getting preachy about it, Hunter shows how a lack of meaningful job prospects has destroyed any sense of community, plunging the characters into loneliness, substance abuse, and in some cases despair. Jonathan Berry's pitch-perfect staging for Griffin Theatre Company captures the corporate blandness of the restaurant as well as the quiet, heart-piercing desperation of the people who work there."
Windy City Times - Highly Recommended
"...Plays written-to-order ( as this was ) can often emerge as little more than a pastiche of the playwright's favorite themes, but while the story leaves a number of questions unanswered, starting with whether Eddie will eventually cease his fruitless attempts to recreate wishful memories of a Norman Rockwell childhood, we depart confident that these descendants of pioneers who first settled this rugged region will survive their existential trials as well."
Time Out Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...Pocatello is perfectly suited to an intimate Chicago storefront and to the strengths of director Jonathan Berry. He elicits fine moments from every single cast member and balances the play's quieter moments with its more farcical. It might be a play about a dying restaurant in a dying town, but under Berry's hand, these people are all very much alive."
ChicagoCritic - Recommended
"...The conclusion is powerful, emotional, and, to me, unsatisfying, yet many audience members found it heartbreaking. Michael McKeogh leads a fine cast and director Jonathan Berry makes the show flow nicely in this moving 95 minute drama. Pocatello is worth a visit."
