Blood on the Cat's Neck at Trap Door Theatre

Chicago Tribune - Recommended

"...The women are especially good. In addition to the coy and mesmerizing Contras, there's Nicole Wiesner's whiskey-voiced dominatrix, who offers up the plaintive post-coital observation "I always feel sick afterward," Lyndsay Rose Kane's abused schoolgirl, and Marzena Bukowska's war widow, who memorably peels and digs at an apple while breaking down the expenses she must meet from her pitiful government pension - her expressions of gratitude at odds with the violence of her gestures."

Chicago Reader - Recommended

"...The rest of the cast's performances range from masterfully grotesque to psychologically empty. Yet the stylistic confusion fittingly makes Fassbinder's sordid, chaotic world all the more unstable."

Time Out Chicago - Recommended

"...Alien scout-in-skivvies Phoebe Zeitgeist (Simina Contras) visits Earth to learn and report the ins and outs of human democracy. Eavesdropping on soldiers, lovers, butchers and models, Zeitgeist analyzes conflicts and boils down their essences to an idiom. German filmmaker and playwright Rainer Werner Fassbinder stops short of any particulars, and I wonder how relevant many of the cannibalistic sentiments expressed in Cat's Neck felt amid the U.S. economic heyday of 1996. Today, watching a laywoman (Marzena Bukowska) budget out her expenses with a moment of disdain for the loose definition of "luxuries," and a model (Antonio Brunetti) espouse beauty as the only true commodity, Pilch's restaging feels more like a contemporary American recession performance-art piece than a generic criticism of human nature."

Stage and Cinema - Recommended

"...Alternately bleak and comic, Blood on the Cat's Neck magnifies the squalid in the mundane from the perspective of an outer space naturist, the alternately naïve and alluring Phoebe Zeitgeist. From beginning to end, Phoebe (Simina Contras) skips through the 75-minutes with the aplomb of an intergalactic vampiric Betty Boop, complete with hat, shoes, opera gloves, and birthday suit (fantastical outfits by Rachel Sypniewski)."

ChicagoCritic - Recommended

"...Blood on the Cat’s Neck is not only a worthy avant garde satirical comedy but it is an actor’s showcase allowing each cast member to have a few moments to shine their stage skills. Chris Popio, the policeman; Carl Wisniewski, the butcher; Nicole Wiesner, the mistress; Nicholas Loumos, the soldier; J. Keegan Siebken, the teacher; Marzena Bukowska, the dead soldier’s wife; Lyndsay Rose Kane, the girl; Antonio Brunetti, the model; and Jacob Alexander, the lover each left it all on the stage in this spirited work."