Chicago Tribune
- Not Recommended
"...In Mashuq Mushtaq Deen's grim drama "Flood," we meet a sad-sack retired couple. He, Darren, spends his time sitting behind his desk making some kind of wooden model and lamenting the perfidy of his grown children. She, Edith, laments her empty nest as this stereotypical couple kvetches, complains and engages in the kind of meaningless blather one associates with the theater of the absurd."
Chicago Sun Times
- Recommended
"...But as Shattered Globe’s 90-minute production flows onward, matters become curiouser and curiouser. A flesh-colored mask obscures half the sculptor’s face, while a small group of them — mouths gaping, eyes vacant — hang from the wall. His silent wife, her smile as immobile as a pageant queen’s, appears with a tea tray, standing — and grinning — for several long moments, only to leave after being ignored."
Chicago Reader
- Recommended
"...What if you took Winnie and Willie from Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days and ran them through a blender with a Neil Simon midlife urban comedy, like The Prisoner of Second Avenue, tossing in a cautionary environmental tale for good measure? Well, you’d probably end up with something pretty similar to Mashuq Mushtaq Deen’s Flood, now in a local premiere with Shattered Globe under Kenneth Prestininzi’s direction."
Chicago Theatre Review
- Recommended
"...It's true that every play isn't for every viewer. But for audiences who are comfortable with the strange reality of Theatre of the Absurd, this play can be a breath of fresh air. Skillfully directed, produced and performed, Mashuq Mushtaq Deen's new futuristic fable is yet another feather in the cap of Chicago's excellent Shattered Globe. The water is rising but before it engulfs Darren and Edith, they have a dark and often funny story to share."
Buzz Center Stage
- Highly Recommended
"...Shattered Globe did its dramaturgy research very well, in bringing us the Chicago premiere of "Flood," Mashuq Mushtaq Deen's very funny, very fresh and highly relevant script. And boy does he have a gift for dialog. It is good, complex, and funny, and charged with barrels of meaning below that surface. "Flood" reminded me for all the world of Harold Pinter or Caryl Churchill's ominous, absurdist theater works, with a quality that is very much in a league with these revered masters."
Third Coast Review
- Recommended
"...Shattered Globe Theatre's new play, Flood, is about family issues-parents who don't understand their children, children who never call home, elderly parents who ignore the realities of today's world. There may be nothing new about that, but the clever script by Mashuq Mushtaq Deen starts a smart, lightning-quick conversation about the looming climate disaster. The result is an entertaining play that will make you wince in recognition of its righteousness."
Chicago On Stage
- Recommended
"...Flood is directed by Kenneth Prestininzi, who allows such a slow build that I almost started believing, near the start, that the play would be silent, like an old movie. (Edith standing near Darren's table with her anticipatory teapot is a very early symbol of these two stationary ships passing each other in the night.) Deen's play is a kind of Waiting for Godot for modern relationships: even if its protagonists ever connect, it would ultimately mean nothing."
PicksInSix
- Recommended
"...In today's world, we are so attuned to what our own realities are and don't always know how to adjust them to fit the moment at hand. We forget sometimes that satire in all its challenging glory is a prime path to making such changes and to look at life in a totally different way. Shattered Globe Theatre's Chicago premiere of "FLOOD" by Mashuq Mushtaq Deen grabs its audience by the throat and takes it on an unusual journey of absurdity-admittedly the kind of trip we are not taken on much these days in the theatre."
Life and Times
- Recommended
"...Shattered Glove Theatre is now presenting “Flood” – a new oddly comedic play about the end of the world. I say oddly comedic because the stage dynamic is theatre of the absurd, presenting dramatic issues under the guise of situations so absurd they toe the line of comedy."
Chicago Culture Authority
- Recommended
"...This is a well-performed but thematically slight one-act that sends its allegorical wave-the powerful and their head-in-the-sand sycophants are blithely leading the world to utter ruin while dismissing the protests of anyone with half a clue-crashing over the audience repeatedly."
NewCity Chicago
- Highly Recommended
"...“Flood” by Mashuq Mushtaq Deen, presented by Shattered Globe Theatre, imagines an extinction-level event out of the Book of Genesis, but occurring in modern times. Directed by Kenneth Prestininzi, the work is a gentle yet terrifying example of how, even in the insular nuclear family, we can become alienated from the people that we love."
