Chicago Tribune - Recommended
"...The combination of all this traumatic content and short running time has the effect of creating a kind of choreo-poem, although green, whose work is impressive here, also makes sure that the transitions are as compelling as the scenes, which go by so fast you hardly have time to grasp the import of their content. It's arguable whether this intentionally disconcerting and elliptical script provides enough context, and it certainly does not offer up characters with whom one can easily empathize, or even who are easy to understand. It is really a glimpsed collage of pain, a chronicle of pushing through, and highly effective as such."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...The circumstances are odd in that participants encounter one another without mediators; the content is mostly trivial, hung up on questions of who will sit where, if they agree to sit at all; and Green's pseudo-Mametian use of repetition and interjection gets annoying quickly, creating more chaos than clarity. But that's the point: Discussion is useless. Only the guilty and the dead know the truth. Under Jonathan L. Green's direction, this 60-minute Sideshow Theatre production concedes nothing to comfort."
Stage and Cinema - Somewhat Recommended
"...Considered with pragmatic harshness, maybe this is as much justice as a play can offer. No more than nations, audiences have no right to mistake ignorance for innocence. But in green’s irony-drenched search for “truth and reconciliation,” we haplessly observe too much “before” and not enough “after.” This all-accusatory one-act is not an exercise in futility—but it sure feels like one."
Chicago Theatre Review - Recommended
"...Audiences will squirm in their seats and may even have to shut their eyes to the dozens of horrific images created by this theatrical piece. But theatergoers will never forget the experience. Even as, it seems, the rest of the world has forgotten these crimes against humanity and the dreadful, true events, these are moments still alive within the core of each character. Stories blend into each other. Some feel almost resolved, while others are left dangling without an end. The lack of completion reminds us that we’re witnessing, regrettably, a universal reoccurrence, from which there may be no escape."
Picture This Post - Highly Recommended
"...In order to share stories based on such harsh realities, the play needed a strong ensemble, and Green certainly found just that. This cast of 22 had to deal with the test of building their arcs in short segments throughout the play as their scenes jumped around mid-story. However, the cast rose to the challenge, and I found that I felt for each of these relationships. The ensemble carried a sense of honesty that truly carried this difficult play."
NewCity Chicago - Somewhat Recommended
"...At sixty minutes and featuring twenty-two actors, debbie tucker green’s “truth and reconciliation” is what you might call a big small work. It’s US premiere indicates that green’s drama, which more often alludes to truth rather than speak it outloud and does not offer much in the way of hope for reconciliation, is in more or less its final form and a curious one at that. Slow to begin and with little connective tissue, green’s play (under the direction of Jonathan L. Green) requires a good deal of investment that may or may not pay off."
