Porcelain presented by Prologue Theatre Company at The Greenhouse Theater Center

Chicago Tribune - Recommended

"...Director Matthew Ozawa's staging keeps the action fluid, though it feels as if there are a couple of ending points before the actual conclusion. Despite some exaggerated accents and postures, the "Voices," as the four men who play all the non-John roles are identified, provide cunning and sometimes poignant interlaced choral commentary. Shimizu delivers a mostly effective performance as a young man undone by his first real taste of passion and what he thinks is acceptance and understanding. And the filthy broken-tile walls of William Boles' set, married to Eric Watkins' sometimes garish, sometimes noirish lighting design, suggest John's emotional and psychic hell - a place of confusion, fragility and pain that no one can ever make whole."

Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended

"...An extraordinarily passionate yet nuanced performance by Scott Shimizu drives Prologue Theatre Company's impressive production of Chay Yew's "voice play," set (and first produced) in London in the early 1990s. Shimizu shines in the demanding role of John Lee, a gay teenager from Singapore arrested for killing a white Englishman—his lover—in the grimy men's toilet where the pair first met for anonymous sex. Employing a nonlinear, semi-ritualistic narrative style, Yew (himself Singapore born, now based in Chicago as artistic director of Victory Gardens Theater) juxtaposes John's relentless interrogation by a devious prison psychologist (who's got troubles of his own) with passages of choral speech evoking the hostile anonymity of the city in which John, desperate for a sense of connection, finds himself a double alien—homosexual and Chinese."

Windy City Times - Highly Recommended

"...This could easily come off today as quaintly academic, if not for Matthew Ozawa's primary directorial experience lying in classical music theater. Under his deft physical orchestration, the didactic textual elements are presented with crisp efficiency on a set designed to invoke a shabby latrine covered in broken and discolored-you guessed it-porcelain tiles, swiftly moving to the intimate dynamics surrounding the crime of passion. By the time the action reaches its climax with the revelation of Lee's obsessive manufacture of the delicate artificial birds, the sheer romance is all but overwhelming. Bring your hankies."

Edge - Highly Recommended

"...Running roughly 90 minutes with no intermission, Prologue Theatre's "Porcelain" has a lot to say with no wasted words or fillers. Due to adult content including a rather graphic sexual assault, the production is decidedly adults only. It's a chilling, thought-provoking piece worth placing on your early summer calendar."

Chicago Stage and Screen - Recommended

"...John Lee’s story is one with which most audiences will be able to relate; the troubling and provocative thing about this play and production is that his is not the only one. Twenty years later, Chay Yew’s play still challenges audience members to examine their own attitudes, or at least their role in shaping a world that still marginalizes people struggling to find their place, rather than helping them to do so."