Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...“Girlfriend,” playwright Todd Almond’s sweet and inventive rock musical now on stage at PrideArts, hinges on the gifting of a mixtape; it’s also, in itself, a narratively enhanced example of the form."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...The titular girlfriend in the local premiere of the two-person musical (book by Todd Almond, music and lyrics by Matthew Sweet) kicking off PrideArts’s 2022-23 season never appears. Referred to only fleetingly, she is nevertheless both presence and absence throughout the story of two young gay men who fall in love after their high school graduation in Alliance, Nebraska, in the summer of 1993."
Around The Town Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...Exploring and pursuing a new relationship can be heartwarming and heartbreaking. Such is the subject matter of the musical “Girlfriend”, a coming-of-age story having to do with a summertime romance between two young men."
Chicago Theatre Review - Highly Recommended
"...Todd Almond’s 90-minute play was inspired by the pop/rock songs of Matthew Sweet’s 1990 album entitled “Girlfriend.” Sweet wrote the songs as an emotional, musical response to his recent, heartbreaking divorce. Rolling Stone said of this album that it’s “equal parts anguish and elation,” which could also be said of Todd Almond’s two-character play. Songs like “We’re the Same,” “I’ve Been Waiting,” and “I Thought I Knew You” seem as if they were composed specifically as the score for this gay love story. But that’s partly what makes this musical feel so universal: through Almond’s story and, especially, Sweet’s catchy songs, this production is for everyone."
Buzznews.net - Highly Recommended
"...And, oh yeah! GIRLFRIEND is a musical! Both Lewis and Stielstra have excellent voices, backed by Robert Ollis and Kyra Leigh on keyboard, Berkett Shertok and Bob Potsic on Bass, Cesar Romero and David Kelley on guitar, and Anthony Scandora on drums. Robert Ollis is Music Director and Kiera Battles Sound Design/Engineer."
Chicagoland Musical Theatre - Highly Recommended
"...Given that Matthew Sweet's classic 90s-as-all-get-out indie album Girlfriend was made on the back of a divorce, it would seem an odd idea to divine a gay coming-of-age romance out of it. Thankfully, Todd Almond is the sort of off-beat to do just that and do it very, very well. A multihyphenate given to the wistful and elliptical, his is the right sensibility to tell the tale of two teenage boys still too isolated from the larger world to grasp the breadth and depth of their feelings, so they speak around them. Say, by bonding over a mixtape."
Queerty - Recommended
"...With a book by Todd Almond and the pop-culture legendary songs of Matthew Sweet's 1991 album of the same name, Girlfriend trades in the nostalgia of a simpler time... even when things weren't so simple, especially for two closeted teens in Nebraska."
