Chicago Reader
- Somewhat Recommended
"...At heart, this is a story about how couples cope with a grim diagnosis and find ways to keep living and loving in the new normal. When Haley Basil's Anna and Keith Surney's Benjamin are speaking their fears and love for each other plainly, it feels honest and empathetic. But Greenblatt's decision to use a narrator, played by Margo Chervony, who also plays assorted other figures, including a hospital chaplain and dreamlike representations of Anna's Ashkenazi ancestors (who, in at least one instance, tell us about how Jews were scapegoated during the European Black Death), muddies the narrative stream. This often deflects from the emotional investment."
Talkin Broadway
- Somewhat Recommended
"...Arts Judaica is presenting the Chicago premiere of Female, Ashkenazi with a Sewing Machine, by Jamie Geenblatt. The three-hander blends various art forms to tell, briefly and impressionistically, the story of Anna, a young woman who was adopted as infant and discovers her ancestry only after her ovarian cancer diagnosis. Although there are some lovely and effective moments in this production, directed by Izadorius Tortuga, and the cast acquit themselves well, the show skips so rapidly and lightly over so much ground that it ends up being both difficult to follow and to connect with emotionally."
Around The Town Chicago
- Recommended
"..."Female, Ashkenazi with a Sewing Machine" by Jamie Greenblatt tells a personal (though fictionalized) story about the playwright's bout with cancer. Part cathartic, part educational, the play lays the groundwork for an audience to learn something about a serious genetic mutation that affects 1 out of 40 Ashkenazi Jewish women. Having the BRCA gene increases the risk that these women will get ovarian or breast cancer sometime during their lifetime."
Chicago Theatre Review
- Somewhat Recommended
"...A lighter touch might have made this sorrowful, dramatic story easier to digest. While no laughing matter, many survivors of cancer point to gallows humor as one of their most valuable survival techniques. There were glimmers of what that could look like: the removal of Anna's organs involved Chervony's doctor character pulling a long, growling puppet from a zipper in Anna's hospital gown, and a repeated refrain that began to take on a tinge of the ridiculous as each character said it."
Third Coast Review
- Recommended
"...This oddly named play is a love story as well as the drama of a serious health risk faced by many women. Rather than treating it in documentary style, its creators use an original musical background and choreographed movement to dramatize the story and alert us to the risks it describes."
Splash Magazine
- Highly Recommended
"...Anna, the protagonist in Female, Ashkenazi, portrayed by Haley Basil, knows little of her past, only that her birth mother left her a sewing machine, which becomes a metaphor both for creation and for "stitching" together one's personal connections. In the play, it links memory to mystery, crafting the ties that bind, and Basil does a fine job developing her character, turning her passion for life and love into winning the fight pf-and for- her life. Keith Surney as husband Benjamin is equally believable as a devout Jew, a proud lover, a frightened support. The third action character is "the Ashkenazi Foundress", strikingly portrayed by Margo Chervony, a lusty, multi-lingual distilled essence of Rachel, Ruth, Leah, and Esther, the Biblical matriarchs of Ashkenazi heritage. Venus Fu's playing and arch facial expressions creates a role as the Foundress' alter ego, moving the action through history and fantasy."
