Winter Reviews

Chicago Tribune - Somewhat Recommended

"...Part of the issue with the play, I think, is that Jensen wants to write about the ethics of taking your own life after your having decided you'd rather not face an impaired future. There are those who arrive at that point, of course, and the topic is compelling. But those who might really follow through with killing themselves is a tiny subset of those who just face a painful tomorrow. And with only 90 minutes to set up all this and play it out, it's perhaps inevitable that one resists some of the collision of events - the rapid progression toward the move, the choice of Thanksgiving (when else?) to lay out all these life-changing issues, the feeling that articulate people like these characters would probably all take a bit more time to talk not just about what they know, but what they cannot grasp."

Chicago Sun Times - Recommended

"...“Winter” is the latest entry in what might someday be a collection of the growing number of “Alzheimer’s spectrum” plays (and that is not meant to be glib, for “King Lear” would easily qualify as the initial entry in any such volume)."

Chicago Reader - Somewhat Recommended

"...In yet another play about an upper-middle-class woman with Alzheimer's, Utah playwright Julie Jensen covers familiar territory. Annis, a retired professor and poet, experiences frustration, terror, and despair as her mental faculties diminish. Robeck, her obsolete scientist husband, imagines denial will forestall the inevitable. Evan and Roddy, her diametrically opposite sons, pursue diametrically opposite plans to support her. And L.D., her wild card granddaughter, is the only one with adequate emotional courage to face Annis's dilemma honestly."

Picture This Post - Highly Recommended

"...This reviewer was so hooked by this story that cravings have begun for a sequel a la Timeline’s Apple plays. Julie Jensen—isn’t there another story here of how each member of this family tries—in the bounds of their so well-defined character—to make lemonade out of the lemons that come after the curtain falls?"

NewCity Chicago - Somewhat Recommended

"...Moving forward, Jensen has a couple of options. The first is to more fully embrace the theatrical possibilities of Annis' untrustworthy subjectivity, making her mind the world of the play a la Lauren Yee's "In A Word." There is also an alternative route, familiar to families living with those whose minds are disintegrating, which would involve a more clinical approach, one that would take emphasis off of Annis and refocus the drama on those around her. Whichever direction "Winter" goes in, what we really need is just more."