Chicago Tribune - Recommended
"...There is little in the first half of Joel Drake Johnson's premiering 90-minute drama that prepares you for what is to come. But as sometimes happens here in Chicago, a blizzard of painful truth, fueled by gut-wrenching acting, eventually engulfs the pedestrian, the familiar and the contrived, and hits you with a thud roughly comparable to landing on your back in the driven snow."
Chicago Sun Times - Recommended
"...Do not be deterred by the strained, sitcomlike opening scenes of Joel Drake Johnson’s play “The Boys Room,” now at Victory Gardens Theater in Sandy Shinner’s sensitively directed world premiere. For what starts off in a disconcertingly stilted way ultimately develops — in just 95 minutes — into one of the more devastating family portraits on any stage at the moment."
Chicago Reader - Somewhat Recommended
"...Johnson and director Sandy Shinner just as clearly want to temper the harsh realities with humor and sentiment—to make this a play you can have fun at. Hence, those poignant moments between Ron and Tim are surrounded by ridiculous reversions to preadolescent bickering. Tim is played by Steve Keys with a wooliness that's probably supposed to be endearing but comes across as suggesting undiagnosed mental issues. Joe Dempsey's Ron actually hides under his bedsheets—not the bed itself, which might make some sense, but the bedsheets—when Roann (fearlessly played by Allison Torem) comes looking for him. The results are neither all that funny nor all that ugly, as a whole, but a disappointing hodgepodge that undercuts itself no matter which way it chooses to go."
Examiner - Somewhat Recommended
"...What saves The Boys Room from being a total slog is the strength of the performances. The fourth player in the tale is Ron’s daughter Roann (Allison Torem). Torem’s young career has been exploding since her debut at Profiles Theatre last season, and justifiably so. She’s remarkable here, every word and gesture ringing true as a wounded, angry teen hovering uneasily in that uncomfortable, no-woman’s-land between girlhood and adulthood. When she unleashes her venom on her father (“I give back you smile…your eyes…I scrape every gene from my skin”) it’s scalding."
Windy City Times - Highly Recommended
"...Lazy playgoers may also chafe under Johnson's mid-story mood switch, but director Sandy Shinner steers her seasoned actors through the difficult transitions to create personalities of unanticipated depth. Mary Ann Thebus takes her sweet-old-granny turn into dark corners of maternal ambivalence, while Allison Torem mines levels of emotional complexity belying her own and her character's youth. Steve Key endows Tim with a waifish amiability, but the evening's surprise is Joe Dempsey, whose trademark swagger gradually dissolves into a vulnerability to break your heart as Ron's self-examination reaches its catharsis to provide audiences a poignant teaching moment for our time."
Copley News Service - Highly Recommended
"...The Boys Room profits from four blue chip performances by three generations of actors. Mary Ann Thebus is the matriarch of the family, feisty and droll with a compassion she visits on Roann that she denies to her sons, who don’t deserve it. Thebus gives a luminous performance, though in her quieter and more intense moments she needs to project more. The audience is hanging on her every word and wants to hear everything."
Time Out Chicago - Somewhat Recommended
"...
Torem and the winning Thebus make their relationship complex, barbed and tender. Johnson regrettably provides Dempsey and Key a slapsticky young-sibs shtick that mixes poorly with the script’s realism, rendering otherwise sterling performances atonal."
ChicagoCritic - Somewhat Recommended
"...It is a good play that, with a bit of fine-tuning, could be great. And it does have the Zeitgeist going for it – it is a very timely play; and, so long as there is unemployment and cancer, it will be relevant. Also, the revelation that, while Tim and his wife were having regular, great sex, before their divorce, Ron and his wife haven’t been intimate in three years, adds to the mystery of what makes marriage work. It also is the first time we see the facade of Ron’s wife’s perfection crack – it humanizes a character in dire need of it; there could be a bit more of that."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Somewhat Recommended
"...Veteran Director Sandy Shinner returns to work with Johnson, making this her sixth collaboration with the playwright. I'm sure over the years they have developed a good artistic relationship with each other, but this production just doesn't reach the mark of quality entertainment. Scenic designer Jeffrey Bauer does an incredible job creating this stereotypical “grandma's house”, the simple house filled with childhood mementos and the casual feel of being at home was one of the most enjoyable things about this production. I guess not every show can be as great as the set though."
Around The Town Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...Finely directed by veteran Sandy Shinner, the emotional roller-coaster is easy to ride. We laugh- we get concerned- and even shed a tear or two as we watch these lives try to untangle from the web that was woven for them called life. The set by Jeffrey Bauer is a two level one that allows us access to the living room/kitchen area and the boys room, still decorated as if two little boys were living in the room, and through most of the play, this is in fact, true! Todd Hensley’s lighting effects enhance the mood of each scene and Andre Pluess ‘s sound design along with Carol J.Blanchard’s costumes complete Shimmer’s picture. This is a show filled with props and I mean filled (a full kitchen and living room with real food) and of course a bedroom with everything a bedroom might contain. Grant Sabin didn’t overlook a single detail. Victory Gardens brings lots of new productions to its stage and many written by their Ensemble playwrights and Johnson is a remarkable listener and viewer of life around him, thus he is able to capture very real situations and put them on paper adding some comic touches where needed and hitting the right buttons so that we the audience can think about how we might deal with a situation such as this."
Chicago Theater Beat - Highly Recommended
"...Forward facing where the men are sinking into a bogus boyhood, the women are far stronger souls. Thebus’ tough-loving Susan is a rich mix of resilience and resignation, unwilling to indulge this second childhood one second more than she needs to. Equally remarkable, Torem’s anguished adolescent conjures up all the collateral damage of broken homes and makes it as specific as a scream."
