Chicago Tribune - Somewhat Recommended
"...The work on the stage does get better — especially from Pat Whalen and Jeff Duhigg, who play the young and older version of the man on trial. Lucy Carapetyan, who plays Gillian, is good too. In fact, most of the acting is solid, as are the production values, thanks to a setting from William Boles that emphasizes the way a person's life stacks up, over time. The scenes that re-create Eric's past life are much stronger than all the verbose narration at the top, which is an issue with Ross Dungan's script."
Chicago Sun Times - Recommended
"...Eric is nothing if not non-committal and hesitant in life. The appealing women he meets - Julia (Ashley Neal), and the alluring Gillian (Lucy Carapetyan) - fail to get any real response from him. Yet he has not, as it turns out, lived an entirely idle life. In fact, he has penned 5,307 "letters" that might just form a book. They somehow land in the apartment of a cellist, Jessica (Julia Siple), who just happens to be compulsive enough to see a pattern."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...Performed without an intermission, this nearly two-hour show from Steep Theatre sparkles with terrific individual performances (Jeff Duhigg, for example, gives a star turn as Argyle), but what really makes the production special is how well this ensemble works together under director Jonathan Berry: thanks to its teamwork and perfect timing, even the quietest moment in this clever play has power and grace."
Windy City Times - Highly Recommended
"...Dungan erects numerous obstacles to ensure that the road of you-know-what never run smooth, but a narrative proposing a performance time of 105 intermissionless minutes demands presentation sufficient to hold its audience's attention while setting up its premise. The thirteen-member Steep Theatre cast operating under the direction of Jonathan Berry accomplishes this task, navigating their intricate text with agility and alacrity right up to a suspense-filled climax that will have theatergoing romantics sniffling into their hankies and the rest pretending not to."
Time Out Chicago - Recommended
"...Jonathan Berry’s staging for Steep Theatre, the play’s Midwest premiere, sidesteps the pitfalls named by reviewers in New York and Los Angeles, who seemed to find Dungan’s work—with its precious setup and shared narration—cloying or twee. (That the L.A. production apparently used a puppet to portray a pair of young girl characters, here played alternately by kid actors Grier Burke and Kylie Sullivan, gives you an idea of where one could go with this material.)"
ChicagoCritic - Not Recommended
"...Don't give up on Steep Theatre since they have been mounting many terrific shows over the last few years. Unfortunately this play was just so poorly structured even for a fine director like Jonathan Berry had little chance for success. It is a long 105 minutes."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Highly Recommended
"...In earning its sentimentality, The Life and Sort of Death of Eric Argyle also earns its resolution, which smartly transcends narrative expectations by literally marking the end of Eric's story. In this play, the protagonist leaves us, not the other way around. Eric Argyle is worth seeing if just for the unexpected quality of self-awareness that will undoubtedly creep up on anyone open to its themes of purpose, commitment and generosity. In drawing Argyle as an everyman and revealing his story as one of simplicity and significance, Dungan successfully does what all great playwrights do. With the assistance of the Steep Theatre Company, his wonderful work will continue to reconfigure our thinking about theatre, each other and life as we know it."
The Fourth Walsh - Recommended
"...Still, I very much enjoyed THE LIFE AND SORT OF DEATH OF ERIC ARGYLE! It had an “It’s a Wonderful Life” whimsy. Plus, the idea of a writer being hit by a truck and dying at 58 was an unnerving wake-up call."
NewCity Chicago - Somewhat Recommended
"...We are repeatedly told that there is something massive at stake, but are never truly shown what that is. We are told that Eric never stopped thinking about Gillian (played by Lucy Carapetyan) over a period of longer than twenty-five years. And we are told that she spent all those years thinking about him. But we never see any evidence of it on stage. This omission is unfortunate, as the entire play’s premise is built on the foundation of the Eric-Gillian relationship we only see in one very brief and incomplete scene."
