Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"...in Pam MacKinnon's unusual but wholly fascinating new production for the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, the illustrious Chicago company's first-ever foray into Albee and a much-anticipated pairing of Tracy Letts and Amy Morton, that's not the way it plays out at all. Morton's Martha -- far more naturalistic, far more normative, for more quickly vulnerable than usual -- is a demonstrably reluctant manipulator. She plays "Get the Guests" and brings up that famous imagined baby, mostly, it feels, because it's the only way of keeping the lid on the house neurotic, to whom she happens to be married. And who is half-cocked and might go off at any moment."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...Thanks to the most meticulous, probing, scalpel-like direction by Pam MacKinnon, and the galvanic yet gorgeously calibrated performances of Tracy Letts and Amy Morton as George and Martha, this enthralling take on Albee’s play makes you feel like an embedded reporter in a harrowing living-room war."
Daily Herald - Highly Recommended
"...
A keen, highly experienced interpreter of Albee's plays, MacKinnon tones down the bombast, dials up the mordant humor and unleashes the raw power and pathos of Albee's script. The result is a distinctive, enlightening, refreshingly unforced production that unfolds not as a slap in the face, but as a painful grip on the upper arm that pulls you back from the brink."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...Of the many productions of the play I've seen, this is the most coherent. MacKinnon—an experienced Albee interpreter who also directed The Play About the Baby for the Goodman Theatre's 2003 Albee festival—is working with a first-rate cast; together they've broken down every beat of the text to probe not only the characters' dramatic arcs but the dialogue's deeper resonances."
Examiner - Highly Recommended
"...For those drawn to the dark side, it’s brilliant. In addition to the powerhouse performances by Letts and Morton, the production features Madison Dirks and Carrie Coon as George and Martha's hapless young guests, Nick and Honey."
Windy City Times - Highly Recommended
"...Sometimes it takes a whole generation for a play to escape its time frame and become a true classic. In 1962, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was all about the squirmy secrets lurking beneath the placid surface of a New England college community—particularly, the lengths to which barren women would go to fulfill their pronatal destiny and men, their masculine imperative. In 2010, however, such idyllic landscapes are found only in real estate brochures, childless couples are no longer objects of pity, and not every metaphor imbued with a political agenda, and so Edward Albee's portrait of marital compromise raises different questions:"
Copley News Service - Highly Recommended
"...The drama is a masterpiece of modern American theater but it isn’t to everyone’s taste. Many people find the venomous infighting between George and Martha distasteful and they sit through the three-hour play in acute discomfort. For these spectators, “Virginia Woolf?” is an unpleasant exercise in sadomasochistic viciousness, never mind how well written."
Talkin Broadway - Highly Recommended
"...This Virginia Woolf is in every way a major production of the classic. Though their rethinking of George and Martha may have altered its dramatic arc in a way that creates some problems, McKinnon, Letts and Morton give us additional insights into the difficulties of accepting reality and adjusting when life doesn't follow the script we expected."
Centerstage - Highly Recommended
"...Throughout the course of the three hour production (two intermissions), nerve endings are raggedly strummed, the innocent Honey is frequently overcome with bouts of nausea, and no one onstage escapes unscathed. What starts out as a darkly comical evening with academics ends as a poignantly painful deconstruction of psyches. Director Pam MacKinnon has a dynamite cast on her hands and she deftly pulls deeply moving performances from them all."
Chicago Stage Review - Highly Recommended
"...Director Pam MacKinnon has crafted a production that will go down in the annals of American theatrical history and that will linger with you longer than any other play you that attend. You will most likely never see a production so perfectly paced, with a complicated build so brilliantly created and so powerfully climaxed. The culminating moment of tenderness proves more crushing than all of the blows that preceded it and completes this theatrical tour de force to sublime and tragic perfection. DO NOT MISS this singular theatrical masterpiece."
Time Out Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...
By playing up the spiky, unsettling comedy of the first two acts, MacKinnon makes the later, darker corners all the more harrowing. But the tonal shift isn’t jarring; MacKinnon hugs the curves in a way one suspects wouldn’t be possible without the firm rapport between Morton and Letts. Even as George and Martha cut each other to the marrow, their portrayers find the love among the ruins."
ChicagoCritic - Recommended
"...Steppenwolf Theatre’s Woolf is dominated by the commanding performance by Tracy Letts as George. In this production, George move back and forth from the weak insecure academic to the forcible, angry gamer player whose attacks hit home toward Martha, Nick and Honey. It is amazing how Letts without changing any of Albee’s words, has raised George into the stronger gamer thus making this George the dominant character in the dysfunctional drama. Tracey Letts is the main reason to see this aging play. His tour de force performance is one of the best of this year."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Recommended
"...All across the board the technical elements delivered beautifully. A brilliant home erected in the midst of the cold concrete walled theatre. A fluid location for the fluidity of fluid consumed lives. This in turn could arguably be a fifth character in the show. All of this erupted from the Tony award winning Todd Rosenthal. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t nit-pick with theatres that should be held on a higher caliber. There were a few lighting snafus. A few lights were unnecessarily harsh on the down right side and on the left side from the top of the staircase. Also when dawn was breaking the look through the front entrance way was beautiful but the window at the top of the stairs didn’t reflect the time of day appropriately."
Around The Town Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...The work of these four powerful actors in making their characters very real ,is amazing. The relationships that we are watching unfold and break right before our eyes are thought provoking. Coon’s Honey is the strongest I have ever seen in that she is not portrayed as only a whimering soul, but rather a woman who knows what she has created for her life. Dirks gives Nick the right macho touch as the trapped man who knowing he was indeed trapped ,allowed his life to be swayed for the pot at the end of the rainbow and Martha and George! What can one say about two beautiful character studies that Morton and Letts bring to new heights, except BRAVO! This is a truly spectacular production under the perfect guidance of MacKinnon."
Reviews You Can Iews - Highly Recommended
"...During the final act, as I drained the few last drops of scotch from my paper cup, that little chunk of ice - which had not melted, despite my bartender’s assurance - clunked noisily against the plastic lid, and the sound was like a bomb exploding. Fortunately, Letts and Morton didn’t seem to notice. Neither did anyone in the audience. George and Martha continued tearing each other apart, tongues lashing vengefully at each other, as I gingerly placed the cup between my feet and sat, frozen, for the remainder of the play."
Chicago Theater Beat - Highly Recommended
"...Revisit Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and you’ll see once again how Albee’s masterpiece not only captures the disturbing dynamic by which some couples love/hate each other, but also how skillfully he grafts America’s Cold War game playing onto the portrait of a marriage. Throughout the play George and Martha’s marriage–marriage in general–is on trial. But so are America’s wars by proxy, its fallacious attempts at nation building and its imperialist misadventures. When will we ever learn that, in the end, whatever we call “victory” just doesn’t make up for the body count?"