Chicago Tribune - Recommended
"...If you’ve read me over the years, you’ll know my lifelong position that theater is at its most effective when it brings people together, moves us, challenges us, and makes us see the unseen. Thanks to these actors, and a director willing and able to show us the cost, the performative cost, of just staying alive, the most secure moments of “Kill Move Paradise” do precisely that. I’ve seen numerous plays with this theme over the last few weeks, and this is a vivid addition. Clark finds many moments of truth and he builds a beautiful ensemble spirit."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"..."Kill Move Paradise" is a wild ride that is not for the faint of heart, yet what will hold your heart is the undercurrent of the strength of hope and brotherhood."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...Directed by Wardell Julius Clark with brutal, beautiful, haunting choreography by Breon Arzell, Kill Move Paradise stands at the unicorn-rare intersection of mesmerizing and indispensable. The skate park-like set (by Ryan Emens) is a netherworld limbo for three Black men and a Black child who have been murdered by cops. The actors don’t enter so much as they are hurled like crash test dummies across the half-pipe, down into an assaultive purgatory of buzzing lights and throbbing noises."
Stage and Cinema - Recommended
"...A compelling Chicago premiere by TimeLine Theatre, Wardell Julius Clark’s 90-minute staging and a quartet of kinetic performances bring Ijames’ afterlife to an angry apotheosis. With the Baird Hall auditorium skewered into an uncharacteristic three-quarter thrust staging, Ryan Emens’ setting is a marbleized outcrop beneath a temple frieze. It’s flanked by a door beyond which are icons of African American history and lore. As a helicopter swirls a cloud of haze, the four individuals drop and roll as they’re delivered to this purgatory."
Let's Play at ChicagoNow - Recommended
"...Wardell Julius Clark is a director known to give us the unapologetic truth on the contrary views regarding blacks with a keen direction. He brings out the reality of the uncomfortable facts by breaking down the conceptualization of Ijames's work. One scene that will cut you to the quick that cuts through the heart, mind, and soul of Black America are the reading of the names of senseless black murdered victims."
Around The Town Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...The news is, for the most part, horrific! Besides all of the political “mumbo-Jumbo” ( this being an election year), we hear about disease, disasters, weather and shootings. Yes, it seems that every Monday we hear about the number of shootings over the week end and the number of deaths from said shootings. It is these deaths that we find ourselves looking at in James Ijame’s drama “Kill Move Paradise” now in its Chicago premiere at Timeline Theatre. Talk about power!"
Chicago Theatre Review - Highly Recommended
"...But the most gut-wrenching scene comes when Isa is forced by the other men to read from the list of names, a document that keeps pumping out from the printer. It's in this unending recital that Ijames' truly hits home hard and breaks every theatergoer's heart. This is a stunning production that will be remembered for years to come. It's a play that absolutely must be seen by everyone."
Third Coast Review - Highly Recommended
"...Kill Move Paradise is richly imaginative and visually stunning. It is not a realistic bang-bang view of the atrocities that black men endure but it is perhaps more damning in its creativity. Clark’s direction draws powerful performances from all four of the actors, each with his own story and personality as created by Ijames (his name is pronounced I’mes). The production is brilliantly enhanced by movement and choreography by Breon Arzell."
Chicago On Stage - Highly Recommended
"...Kill Move Paradise is an overwhelming spectacle that, while repeatedly and bluntly stating that the audience is only there to watch, hopes and expects us to do far more than that. It is of course doubtful that a play could change the world-and anyway, given the self-selected audience, Ijames is probably preaching to the choir-but if one could ever truly raise the consciousness and awareness of the daily struggles of Black Americans in the minds of White people still unaware of the depths of privilege they are steeped in, this is probably it. It is a sharp, multi-bladed knife slicing away any possibility of indifference, and-especially at this time in history-a loud and necessary voice for understanding and change."
PicksInSix - Recommended
"..."Kill Move Paradise," magnificently cast and directed by Wardell Julius Clark in its Chicago premiere, which opened Thursday at TimeLine Theatre Company on S. Wellington, is a startling, ambitious and innovative theatrical experience. Three men-Isa (Kai A. Ealy), Grif (Cage Sebastian Pierre) and Daz (Charles Andrew Gardner)-arrive at different intervals in the vortex of the moment between life and death as, through their interactions, explorations and experiences, they grasp for understanding of what it means to be black in America. That vortex is "Kill Move Paradise." There are rules to follow while you wait."
Picture This Post - Highly Recommended
"...In this writer's view, Playwright James Ijames has created the perfect set up for us to confront the systemic slaughter of Black Men, and Black Women too, that those of us with white skin privilege can be numb to, while others of color cannot. This imagined place from Ijames' pen‑ where all souls on ice and souls numbed thaw into raw reveals- is purgatory for all the Black Lives cut short, and hungering to Matter."
Splash Magazine - Highly Recommended
"...Powerful, profound, compelling, challenging are adjectives that describe Chicago's Premiere Kill Move Paradise. This production by TimeLine Theatre, 615 W. Wellington Avenue, in the Lakeview neighborhood running from February 20-April 5 2020 is in perfect alignment with its mantra: Exploring today's issues through the lens of the past. Entering the charming Wellington Avenue United Church of Christ one is immediately confronted with a wall honoring 137 names ripped from the recent headlines of senseless killings."
NewCity Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...It’s the silence in TimeLine Theatre Company’s production of James ljames’ “Kill Move Paradise” that will haunt you. As when Isa, Daz, Tiny or Grif look you in the eye and say nothing. Or when they ask something and your brain races, your eyes boring into their faces, wondering if you are supposed to answer. If you are, what do you say? How do you speak into existence the truths that are supposedly self-evident?"
