Chicago Reader - Somewhat Recommended
"...There are times when the combination of direct translations, video subtitles, and poetic movement pieces creates poignant moments, as when a series of playful back-and-forths with the audience results in everyone in the room signaling "alone." But it's hard to make heads or tails of the thing as a whole—the two stories just don't click."
Windy City Times - Somewhat Recommended
"...This doesn't mean there aren't moments of calm cognition, most often instigated by Michael J. Stark as the silent Grandmother and Dari Simone as feisty Little Red. Benjamin Ponce's gentle and hesitant Cyrano, however, lacks the swagger befitting a cavalier duellist ( all swordplay is mimed, by the way ), while Dave Honigman-himself a former Big Top circus clown-too often portrays Christian more boisterously than his performance space can comfortably enclose. Our only relief arrives with sound designer Sarah D. Espinoza's choice of Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf" as our exit music after two hours of being buffeted about by conceptual overload."
Theatre By Numbers - Not Recommended
"...I am not sure what moral to take away from this production, except to say that it is not a celebration or a full critique of the fairy tale, Cyrano, and culture. Male entitlement is the blamed culprit in the end, but I struggle to find the roots of that in any of the stories Red Theater combines onstage. After the villains were punished at the play’s conclusion, I found myself asking whether they, or I, had learned a valuable lesson."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Highly Recommended
"...Red Theater Chicago’s Little Red Cyrano debuted this past weekend at Strawdog Theater’s new home. In an apocalyptic world at war where humans are turning into beasts due to the chemicals inside bombs ravaging their land, a complicated love triangle based upon disguise and miscommunication emerges. Playwright Aaron Sawyer combines Charles Perrault’s 1617 Little Red Riding Hood and Cyrano de Bergerac (1879) in order to explore the concepts isolation and deception in a grizzly new format."
Chicago Theatre Review - Somewhat Recommended
"...Aaron Sawyer's new adaption is clever in how it melds together two well-known stories. Where it strays into dark, disturbing territory is when the playwright's ideas surface about an impending revolution that, strangely enough, includes the audience among its membership. We're continually reminded that we're all alone in life; as loners we're looking for companionship. By joining the rebels, we'll achieve this and discover a common method of communication. But by making theatergoers part of the story, we're all implicated in the final, deadly, disturbing moments of the play. It's unsettling, to say the least."
NewCity Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...Deep in the forest lived a woodsman. Also an old woman and her granddaughter. Also a baker and his wife, a band of soldiers, some poets and disembodied voices and a ragtag gaggle of mutants. “Anything can happen in the woods,” wrote a certain lyricist in a certain fairytale mashup. So why can’t Cyrano de Bergerac meet Little Red Riding Hood in a sad romance told in American Sign Language by clowns and d/Deaf actors with occasional acoustic accompaniment? The answer is, of course he can—in Red Theater Chicago’s wonderful production of Aaron Sawyer’s “Little Red Cyrano.”"
