Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"...A rock concert by its nature combines shout-it-to-the-rafters raw emotion with reflective intimate storytelling between songs, thus making it the perfect format for what Lee is going for. If you really want to get somebody in the emotional solar plexus, say it with music. (Notably, "Church" ended with the audience brought up to sing and dance with the "congregation.")"
Chicago Reader - Somewhat Recommended
"...It's hard to fault the performances or the sincere emotions behind these songs and stories, but it's equally difficult to believe that anyone past middle school would be confronting some of these issues for the very first time. When the singer/narrator mentions finding her first gray hair to her mother, I couldn't help wondering what she was doing still living with her parents. The show would be ideal for a school assembly; grown-ups might be better off seeking therapy."
Windy City Times - Highly Recommended
"...The finale—replete with disco lights, balloons, confetti, drill-formation dances, American Sign Language translations, screaming guitar, crash cymbals and floor-percussion filling every corner of the Den's cabaret-sized Bookspan room—invites us to join in a fist-shaking marching-tempo anthem to defiantly proclaim our eventual expiration. Even if you accept the earplugs offered to playgoers before the show ( which you won't really need ), the catchy refrain of "We're gonna die/we're gonna die someday/Then we'll be gone/and it will be okay" will persist in your memory for weeks."
Time Out Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...Our inevitable, imminent demise may not seem the most celebratory of topics, but in the experimentalist playwright Young Jean Lee's genre-defying, thoroughly disarming We're Gonna Die-a kind of theatrical, rock & roll cabaret act first performed by the writer in 2011 and given its Chicago premiere here by Haven Theatre-we find that death really becomes us. Standing in for Lee, punkily winsome Isa Arciniegas alternates relating personal-tragedy tales about childhood rejections, bad breakups, and parental illnesses with wry rock songs, with a beguiling four-piece band backing tunes with funny-because-they're-true messages about the inexorability of mortality. As if by magic, the act of acknowledging our collective fate makes it all seem not just okay, but cool-and worth singing along to."
Theatre By Numbers - Somewhat Recommended
"...I found myself constantly struggling with a disconnected feeling from the material. I see what Sobel and his cast are attempting to do, but never was I drawn into what could have been an empowering, or at least entertaining evening about life, death, and everything else. So it is that I merely got to hear some well-executed music, and some sub-par storytelling."
ChicagoCritic - Recommended
"...Haven Theatre's production of We're Gonna Die features some catchy musical number and some engrossing stories whose details resound with real-life experience. For all its bleakness, the production is definitely a feel-good show that lets you get lost in the Dionysian rhythms of punk-rock angst. I'm just not sure what there is to feel good about."
The Fourth Walsh - Highly Recommended
"...WE’RE GONNA DIE unites us in the knowledge we’re gonna die. Bad things will happen… until we die. Although I always knew that, this shared experience was its own epiphany. "
