Elephant's Graveyard Reviews

Chicago Tribune - Somewhat Recommended

"... Dark as the story may be (everything has a wonderfully mildewed look), the elephant as a character is sketchily drawn. Her death is truly awful stuff, but I found that I didn't feel an emotional tie to the creature. She's no"War Horse,"let's put it that way. But this circus isn't much of a circus either. It is a self-serious affair from the word go, and if you think that might detract from the actual moment of tragedy, you would be right."

Windy City Times - Recommended

"...The tragic scope that this Red Tape Theatre production could have generated is unfortunately diminished by its configuration to an arrangement seating the audience not only on opposite sides of the arena-like playing space, but elevated on galleries high above the floor. This forces unmiked actors to repeatedly direct their voices away from half of their audience, so that even when vocalizing straight for the rafters, many important textual details are rendered unintelligible. If this concept's purpose was to replicate the limited vantage of eyewitnesses to the original event, it also cheats us of fully comprehending the occurrence under scrutiny, much as a similarly myopic view did the bloodthirsty mob of a century earlier."

Centerstage - Somewhat Recommended

"... It’s a good beginning, but the gloom and doom stays while the story stagnates. The problem is, the actors tell the tale rather than show it. It’s a heavy-handed collection of mournful monologues with very little interaction among characters, despite the fact that most of them are on stage at the same time."

Time Out Chicago - Highly Recommended

"...Step right up to George Brant’s big-top retelling of a horrific true tale. The playwright shapes the story of a third-rate traveling circus with a five-ton star into a kind of Southern gothic, unspooling with the inevitability of a Flannery O’Connor short. Sparks’s World Famous Shows lumbers through 1916 East Tennessee, riding the rails and riding on its main attraction, Mary the elephant—said to be three inches taller than P.T. Barnum’s Jumbo. But when Sparks pulls into Erwin, a sleepy hamlet colored yellow with mud, tragedy is set into motion."

Chicago Stage and Screen - Recommended

"...At play’s end it’s hard to determine just what the payoff might be. Clearly, Brant’s recreation is more than just a retroactive warning to Tennesseans of 96 years ago to remove all watermelons from Main Street. This sardonically named “Elephant's Graveyard” seems more tour d’ensemble than a conventional drama, more a dream than a depiction. But Red Tape never breaks its spell and the pathetic slaughter of a five-ton rogue named Mary won’t be soon forgotten. "

Chicago Theater Beat - Highly Recommended

"...Director James Palmer fills the Big Top with a-whole-lotta acts. Aided by Myah Shein (choreography and movement), Palmer orchestrates carnies, townies and the six-piece band in a relatively small space. Palmer keeps the movement fluid with periodic dramatic pauses. The mob frenzy becomes disquieted with the ongoing appearances of an execution hood."