Chicago Tribune - Recommended
"...Lubischer, a writer of great talent, may well turn out to be a significant Chicago playwright. He has to be careful to avoid pretension, I think, and continue to mine the benefits of ensemble-based theaters like Steep and collaborative directors like Sobel. There are a few moments in "Bobbie Clearly," those that really zone in on the intersection of anger and pain, that are as good as any play you can see right now, anywhere in town."
Chicago Reader - Somewhat Recommended
"...Rather than generate energy from incongruity, Bobbie Clearly director Josh Sobel lets it drain away. In his uncertain staging, the title character and his neighbors come off as (mostly oafish) rhetorical mechanisms."
Chicago On the Aisle - Somewhat Recommended
"...Especially curious is the play's denouement, which takes a hard jerk from compelling to merely bizarre. It involves Bobbie using a hand puppet, at the talent show, to reconnect with the little girl he murdered those many years ago. It's a frankly heart-stopping scene, genuinely brilliant - and then the whole thing falls apart in surreal fashion, in a general brawl, with the two emcees in upbeat mode as if no ruction were taking place behind them. The turn feels contrived and, after Bobbie's melancholy dialogue with the puppet, dreadfully anticlimactic."
ChicagoCritic - Somewhat Recommended
"...This play is so unbelievable, under developed and misguided that I’m thinking that it is a parody of small town murder mysteries? With so many preposterous plot twists and so many wacky characters (more than I have mentioned here.), What else could it be? As a world premiere, Playwright Alex Lubischer needs to refocus what his play is actually about. As presented, my conclusions could be valid? If he wants to leave audiences with another impression than he needs to make that clearer. As it plays now Bobbie Clearly is confusing."
Picture This Post - Highly Recommended
"...Actually, the entire cast shimmers with sensitivity to the people they bring to life on an almost bare stage that is sometimes wrapped in spot-on affect match music. (Sound Design & Original Music: Thomas Dixon). Perhaps it's the touch of Director Josh Sobel , but one suspects he just unleashed the cast "talent show"-"talent show" being another script metaphor demanding that you mull it over and over again."
NewCity Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...Thematically and structurally Lubischer’s world premiere is remarkable, one of the first great new works of this nascent season alongside “Life Sucks” and “good friday.” As is sometimes the case, there is too much talent to do a thorough accounting of but the abundance suits this piece. “Bobbie Clearly” is a collective portrait, a vision of a town (a country, a world) at odds with itself over how it wants to be understood."
