Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"...She Stoops works surprisingly well up at the Northlight Theatre in Skokie. Aside from supremely careful execution, a light touch and a lovely original score from Andrew Hansen, it's mostly because Brown -- a skilled director with a very precise sense of what he wants -- has found a concept that both fits and illuminates the fun of the play."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...The songs are expertly performed and sung by Matthew Brumlow, Alex Goodrich and Susan Felder, who also transforms Bet Bouncer into a saucy Western saloon gal."
Daily Herald - Recommended
"...Director/adapter William Brown sets William Goldsmith's 18th-century comedy of manners in the 19th-century American West and adds a tasty, twangy score by composer Andrew Hansen and lyricists Doug Frew and Patti McKenny. The result is a delightful confection about misunderstandings, mistaken identities and misguided schemes involving a pair of English aristocrats wooing a couple of Western gals."
Chicago Reader - Recommended
"... Brown also grafts on tender-to-rousing country-western songs by Andrew Hansen that serve only to slow down and sentimentalize the story. With this change in place and pace, the laughs lessen. But more than ever we can savor the full effects of Goldsmith's shrewd lesson in the psychology of courtship. Kymberly Mellen makes the wily wooer, a witty Annie Oakley, both cunning and curious, and Timothy Edward Kane's shock at finally being honest with a woman who's his equal is richly satisfying."
Windy City Times - Somewhat Recommended
"...For all its flaws, there is, nevertheless, much to enjoy in this Northlight production. Andrew Hansen, Doug Frew and Patti McKenny contribute a score of hoot-n-holler ballads to bridge ( or, at times, interrupt ) the action, rendered with gusto by Alex Goodrich, Susan Felder and Matthew Brumlow. Rachel Anne Healy’s costumes acquaint us with Goldsmith’s personae as efficiently as whole pages of expository monologue. And a cast of seasoned players step through their paces as smartly as if their soufflé-light script hadn’t been brought to the table before its cooking was complete."
EpochTimes - Recommended
"...The story is that of two young ladies, who meet two young men from England, each having to find a way to win the heart of the one chosen. While the original text is often intact, the uniqueness of how it is presented shows how wonderful a theatrical experience can be. To take a classic, retool it and reshape it and then present it with a new twist and have it work is what Northlight has done."
Time Out Chicago - Somewhat Recommended
"...You can imagine how satisfying it must have been to discover, inch by inch, how Goldsmith’s world matches up with that of Louis L’Amour. And given the raggedy mischief of Haggard (he’d be a decent Tony Lumpkin in any era), the ridiculous dapperness of Grimes (even his foppish strawberry-blond locks have comic timing), or the astonishing drollness Kane brings to his flirtation scenes (he proves again as slumming Mr. Marlow that matinee-idol casting is far beneath him), you can tell Brown’s roundly adept cast is having a ball. But yet somehow it’s never quite as fun for us."
ChicagoCritic - Highly Recommended
"...She Stoops to Conquer still contains many laughs as it once again proves that classics can be high entertainment if well acted, nicely staged and articulated with zest. This show is fun! You’ll have as much fun seeing She Stoops to Conquer as the cast is having playing this ambitious show. Kudos to Northlight Theatre for such a cool show!"
