Chicago Tribune - Recommended
"...this still is a gutsy piece of directing, and most all of the performances (Paul D’Addario and Andy Fleischer play Margarie’s doodlers and diddlers) reflect deep dives into characters whose actions both reflect and belie their traumatized inner complexity, and malevolence."
Chicago Sun Times - Somewhat Recommended
"..."Hang Man" does ultimately feel overly elusive, perhaps even literary rather than dramatic. A subplot relationship between Sage and a convict who converted to Islam in prison (Martel Manning) never becomes compelling. Other than G (who is played so beautifully by teenager Gordon), there aren't characters to care about in the traditional sense, and Osei-Kuffour resists metaphors as much as she suggests them."
Time Out Chicago - Somewhat Recommended
"...Hang Man’s mix of tones and styles add up to something wholly uncanny, but never quite cohere into anything substantial. Darnell talks to us from his place up in the tree, and he also talks to G when she comes across him. Meanwhile, Margarie buys an Afro wig to try to get closer to Darnell and also claims to be carrying his child—a claim that is strangely born out by her rapidly expanding belly. The play operates with a mixture of dream logic, realism and outsized satire that proves to be immiscible."
Let's Play at ChicagoNow - Not Recommended
"...We are still trying to find our way in this world where we see each other through our eyes more than the humanity of our heart, Hang Man illogical attempt to provide a message that comes off as meaningless and cold. This play needs a significant change before we can see any meaning that would suffice for good theater."
Around The Town Chicago - Somewhat Recommended
"...This new work, written by Stacy Osei-Kuffour, is supposed to be a haunting drama that takes us to the back woods in a Southern town, as we deal with a Black man, found hanging from a tree, and how the residents of the community, Black and White, deal with it."
Chicago On Stage - Somewhat Recommended
"...The bottom line here is that I left the play feeling that I’d been through a wringer when I think the playwright wanted me to feel the sheer absurdity and illogicalness of the play’s sequences. I felt on several occasions that there were lines that, read a different way, might have been funny in their utter incongruity, but instead I got racist Archie. When a third of the play focuses on a dead man explaining his outrageous kink gone wrong and another third focuses on a certifiably insane woman who is in love with a corpse, I shouldn’t exit the theatre thinking about nothing but a huge man (compared to all of the other characters), overpowering everyone with his bellowed bigotry. It would have been a far better show had I left thinking about Marjorie’s lunacy."
Splash Magazine - Highly Recommended
"...The performance takes off like a house afire and really never lets go until the very end. 75 jam-packed minutes can barely contain the various aspects of the drama, but an intensely and intimately controlled script and perfectly projected personalities take the audience on an inexorable and uncomfortable plummet toward realization and denouement. This is not an easy play to experience, but you will come away, as this reviewer did, with a sense of completion, if not moral victory. In the midst of rampant self-betrayal – because isn’t the despising of any person by any other person an act of self-betrayal? – a miracle transpires."
NewCity Chicago - Somewhat Recommended
"...“Hang Man” is a technically beautiful show, impeccably designed, brilliantly acted, well written and directed. But it’s a hard show, triggering for POC audiences and challenging to white ones. I wonder especially whether it will land with white audiences in Chicago, who, in their inherent biases, complicity, and liberal city bubble, are liable to look at the racist archetypes represented by the white characters onstage and think to themselves, “Yes, but that doesn’t happen here.”"