Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...Remarkably, director Gus Menary transforms the mechanical script into a warm, nuanced, deeply felt production. He's assembled a cast who sublimate their every emotion and intention, creating intrigue where Lin offers illustration. They even manage to make expository dialogue sound natural. The approach is particularly helpful in act two, when Lin largely abandons the dueling economist story in favor of exploring the inner lives of ancillary characters. They're the best scenes in the play, even if they feel like they're leftovers from previous drafts, and the actors plumb them exquisitely. This show is another reminder that you don't see better acting on any Chicago stage than Jackalope's."
Theatre By Numbers - Recommended
"...If you are looking for an evening of theatre examining success and failure, "Life On Paper" fits the bill, gently unraveling individual problems until we see how our problems are always connected to, and might in fact be solved by, the lives of other people."
Third Coast Review - Highly Recommended
"...The story of Life On Paper is great, and the acting fully supports it. Every cast member—Mary Williamson, Joel Ewing, Guy Wicke, Satya Jnani Chavez, and Josh Odor—does a fantastic job of portraying their characters as flawed, sympathetic people. I loved watching Ida and Mitch’s relationship evolve, from somewhat friendly competition to something a bit stronger, although I won’t go into any more detail. In particular I really loved Chavez’s performance as Maggie, who for most of the play is merely a waiter that the rest of the cast infrequently interacts with, but she ends up performing an astounding musical number, which completely surprised and impressed me."
Storefront Rebellion - Somewhat Recommended
"...Menary’s physical staging is a little clunkier than I’ve come to expect from Jackalope—expect lots of long, furniture-shuffling scene changes—but Ewing and Williamson so fully inhabit their all-too-relatable characters that you’ll forgive the traffic jams. A small-town story that also makes room for infinity, Life On Paper handily proves the futility of reducing lived experience to numbers on a spreadsheet."
NewCity Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...Lin’s play enjoys interrogating perceived dichotomies: art against math, expertise against intuition, routine against spontaneity, chaos against order. In each case, Lin works through the arguments on both sides, giving and taking, until arriving conclusively at the understanding that nothing is either/or but rather all is a blend, like those wines your mom kept buying a few years ago, insisting that they were “the new hip thing.” And just like wine and moms, “Life On Paper” is a thing to be appreciated or, alternatively, called upon in a moment of need. It is a comfort, one that you might not realize you needed but one that you’ll be all the more grateful to because of its unexpected existence."
