Chicago Tribune - Somewhat Recommended
"...But the main issue here is that it is very tough to believe that Rae Gray, a capable adult actress handed a very tough assignment, is a naive 15 year old (she says she is 17, but she clearly is lying). Her character, The Child, is smart and far from entirely naive (she already has enjoyed a long affair with her brother, Paolo, gently played by J.J. Phillips), but this work is full of the language of The Child (and her title is no accident) having little identity, beyond the sexual, of her own, which is what makes her so appealing to her older lover. It's hard to mesh that with Gray's flat, world-weary delivery (Allison Torem, playing a school chum, is much more credible as a teen). Gray's more sardonic tones make her come off as closer to Dunagan's narrator (who should be the one with the distance and the context) than The Child of Duras' telling."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...Now, in “The North China Lover,” an altogether exquisite Lookingglass Theatre premiere, adapter-director Heidi Stillman has worked a small miracle of artistic transubstantiation, creating a play that magically combines the meditative poetry of the page, the dreamy luminosity of cinema and the vivid reality of the stage. This is a real beauty of a show — erotic, exotic, psychologically probing and full of meticulously detailed performances. Intended for mature audiences (it contains an exceptionally lovely nude scene), it spins a story that has as much to do with memory, loss, money, exile, racism and cruelty as it does with love."
Chicago Reader - Somewhat Recommended
"...Unfortunately, what happens on the periphery is more interesting than what's supposed to be the main attraction: the affair of "the lover" and "the child," played by Tim Chiou and Rae Gray. Chiou certainly looks the part (which is pretty much all that's required of him), and Gray has a knack for wry line readings. But their dealings with one another feel remote and unconvincing, mostly because Gray is tasked with playing the sort of virginal yet world-weary teenager who we can buy on the page but who comes across as artificial in three dimensions. The affair presented here hardly seems worth obsessing over for 50 years. Stillman vividly portrays the act of remembering, but the central action is oddly forgettable."
Windy City Times - Recommended
"...Heidi Stillman's adaptation of Leigh Hafry's translation tempers the rhapsodic passages with backstory on The Child's unwholesome family-absent father, bankrupt mother, spoiled-bully older and clingy boy-toy younger brothers-as well as observations on pragmatic Mandarin parents and slavishly obedient offspring. Rae Gray and Tim Chiou are a suitably decorative pair of odalisques, while Amy J. Carle, Walter Owen Briggs, JJ Phillips and Allison Torem deliver sturdy portrayals of their ground-gripper colonialist archetypes. Their progress is recollected for us by its now-aged author, identified only as "M" ( but who may be The Child in real life ), played by Deanna Dunagan with a delicate charm inviting us to shelve our cynical modern sensibilities and surrender to the heady effervescence of post-Belle Epoque nostalgia-harmless enough, when savored, like absinthe, in small doses."
Time Out Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...The presence of Dunagan as the writer, both wistful and magisterial in her remembrance, helps to mitigate modern discomfort with the idea of this girl in her young teens carrying on with an older man; these were formative and happily sensual experiences, we're visually reminded. Gray nicely captures the Child's blend of adolescent bravado and real, beyond-her-years self-assurance-a product, it seems, of a difficult life at home with her distant mother (Amy J. Carle) and brothers Pierre (Walter Owen Briggs), a dangerous ne'er-do-well, and the docile Paulo (JJ Phillips), who has been the Child's previous lover. Chiou is stately, tender and demonstrates deep, frustrated sorrow when the pair's unavoidable separation comes along-the kind of flame one would absolutely keep burning in your mind. Stillman's one misstep is an ending that aims for closure rather than letting memory be enough."
Stage and Cinema - Recommended
"...Stillman gives her recreation a suitably cinematic and minimalist treatment, with Daniel Ostling’s lighting setting the scenes and a few props illustrating the memories. The acting must provide context and texture here and, for the most part, does. Erotic and elegant, Chiou is both authentic and a fairy-tale prince, the stuff that memories would batten on his multifaceted wonderfulness and never want to quit. Carle is strangely sympathetic as a mother who’s wiser than her bad luck."
ChicagoCritic - Highly Recommended
"...Throughout the play, there is a wonderful ambivalence about motivation. Who is this complex girl who has a troubled relationship with her mother (Amy J. Cade), an antagonistic relationship with her older brother Pierre (Walter Owen Briggs) an incestuous relationship with brother Paulo (JJ Philips), a lesbian relationship with her roommate Helene (Allison Torem), and who now enters an impossible affair with an older man from another culture?"
Around The Town Chicago - Recommended
"...Lookningglass Theatre Company is one of my favorite spots to view plays. They are a true "black box" where they can convert the entire theater to fit what they are producing. Their current production, "The North China Lover' is done in a normal theater setting with a stage area and the seating all facing the stage. Very conventional, but the story, a stage adaptation of the book ( a seemingly autobiography) by Marguerite Duras ( translated by Leigh Hafrey) is a story of "first Love". The time is the 1930′s and we are in the French Quarter of Indochina. Our heroine, The Child ( skillfully played by Rae Gray, who many of us have watched grow up on our Chicago area stages). The Child is in fact the younger Ms Duras. The elder version, called M, is deftly handled by Chicago favorite Deanna Dunagan, who narrates the story as she is creating the book, which from the very start is mentioned by The Child"."
Chicagoland Theater Reviews - Somewhat Recommended
"..."The North China Lover" is a tale of doomed passion. Unfortunately, the production has an acute shortage of the eroticism that should drive the story (there is brief nudity an in early scene but overall the sexual heat is notably low). The core difficulty may be the miscasting of Rae Gray as the Child. Gray is coming off a superior performance in "Slogirl" at the Steppenwolf Theatre and is one of the finest of the deep pool of young actresses on the local scene. But there are no sexual sparks in her rendering of the Child and her sensual rapport with Tim Chiou's Lover is lacking. It's a laid back performance that robs the story of its emotional fire, and that's the engine that drives the narrative."
