Blue Stockings presented by Promethean Theatre Ensemble at The Den Theatre

Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended

"...It took 800 years for Cambridge to admit women, almost 850 to award them diplomas. Swale's play is concerned with a movement to let women graduate from Cambridge's sister school for girls, Girton College. It's a tough sell for the women at the hub of director Spenser Davis's incendiary never-mind-reading-this-get-a-ticket-now-caliber Promethean production."

Edge - Recommended

"...Swale's play, for the most part, deftly blends the personal with the political by following the lives of four women with disparate experiences and ambitions, all of whom are pursuing courses of study in science at exactly the moment a coalition of progressives strives to put to a vote in the Cambridge Senate the issue of whether the women of Girton deserve the same formal credentials at the end of their studies as their male peers."

Chicago Theatre Review - Recommended

"...In the balance, I think the students get reduced a bit to archetypes and the show tries to balance too much material in dramatizing the struggle for academic acceptance and the exploration of whether the female students can ‘have it all,’ but on the strength of an extremely talented cast, this is still a show worth your attention."

Buzznews.net - Highly Recommended

"...The mark of a good playwright, Swale gives us a host of distinct and memorable characters, and an entertaining story line, too. Girton lecturer Mr. Banks (Patrick Blashill) is that inspiring and nurturant educator who helps reorder the women students’ thinking. He has them dress in bloomers (those billowy 19th century pants) and teaches them to ride a bicycle, astride no less. (In real life, this happened, and the male students protesting women’s degrees burned in effigy a woman on a bicycle.)"

Chicago On Stage - Recommended

"...It is fascinating to watch this impressive, engaging, and important play in an era in which it is easy to observe that, no matter how far women have come, it’s still men who have the power, and they too often use that power to encumber progress. The retrograde motion of this country’s abortion laws is one indication of this, but we can find it in the vociferous and vicious attacks on the first female Presidential candidate, the repeated lax punishments and excuses made for rapists across the nation, and even the treatment of the LGBTQ community."

TotalTheater - Highly Recommended

"...Under Spencer Davis's direction, a cast of seasoned storefront-circuit regulars concentrate on the issues under scrutiny, while still attacking their roles with disciplined gusto and not a trace of caricature (though the palpably enthusiastic opening-night audience included one theater critic-not me-whose review expressed a longing to inflict violence on the speaker of a particularly virulent sexist diatribe)."

Picture This Post - Highly Recommended

"...Promethean’s production of BLUE STOCKINGS does an excellent job of provoking emotions from their audience, in this writer’s opinion. We feel hopeful and excited as the women show their brilliance and steadfastness as they fight for their right to get a degree. And we feel our tempers boiling as man after man tries to assert themselves as the superior minds."