Chicago Tribune
- Highly Recommended
"...Director Si Osborne's world premiere production is unpretentiously staged but shrewdly cast, and it includes a simply heartbreaking performance from Mair that, quite simply, reveals the agony of not being able to control someone else's level of maturity and surety. At one point in Act 2, after things have gone wrong, Mair's Reina recounts a simple night out with gal pals in a Schaumburg sports bar, where the prowling upper-middle-class consultants are demonstrably uninterested in a pregnant girl. This, she convinces us, is the ultimate manifestation of hell for a girl with a bump and no committed partner. She had me preferring the idea of the fiery furnace to Miller Lights and management consultants leering over your elbow."
Chicago Sun Times
- Recommended
"...Yet the playwright, a co-founder of Gift, has written a likeable play that is tender, funny and, at moments, wise. Through tightly etched scenes, he creates a world that rings true whether set in small town or big city. After all, we’re all familiar with the winds of change that for better or worse blow through our lives."
Chicago Reader
- Somewhat Recommended
"...John's identity crisis is suggested but never really explored, while certain plot points can be seen coming a mile away. What's more, neither the crisis nor the plot points are adequately resolved. Si Osborne's well-cast production makes it clear that there's a strong play in the making here. Diane Mair is extraordinary as John's love interest, Rayna, putting the character’s entire history into every gesture."
Examiner
- Highly Recommended
"...Watching this small group grows and changes over the course of Northwest Highway's 90-minutes is funny, sad and often moving. In all, the Gift has succeeded in producing a show that hits as close to home as the neighborhood where it unfolds. It’s a small wonder of a play, and one that makes you wonder what Nedved will do next."
Windy City Times
- Recommended
"...This is enough premise to fuel an entire television series, ripe with promises of subsequent intrigues both sudsy-dramatic (cops under investigation over missing drugs, a reformed-addict romantic rival) and cuddly-comic (Aunt Joyce's African-American Hyde Park-academic husband, Colin's propensity for Latino boys). Under Si Osborne's deft direction, however, what could have deteriorated into domestic hankie-wringing emerges a surprisingly uncluttered 90 minutes on Gift Theatre's snug stage, its weighty complications proceeding at a tempo neither overly-rushed nor cloyingly maudlin, even as its physical action never seems cramped by Adam Lucas Veness' museum-replica backyard/porch/basement-stairs scenic design."
Time Out Chicago
- Highly Recommended
"...Osborne’s staging isn’t always as clean as it could be, but he draws some bracing performances out of his well-matched actors. Mair is heartbreakingly honest as a woman at the mercy of her boyfriend’s chronic uncertainty, but Harris somehow finds sympathy in John’s reeling panic. Nedved plants a couple of Chekhovian guns early on in his script, but when they finally go off, the effects aren’t what you’d expect. Moreover, his characters are as sharply observed as scenic designer Adam Lucas Veness’s cluttered back porch.
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The Gift Theatre. By William Nedved. Dir. Si Osborne. With Boyd Harris, Diane Mair, Gabriel Franken, James D. Farruggio, Alexandra Main."
ChicagoCritic
- Recommended
"...Without giving away too much of the plot, let me state that Northwest Highway is a worthy 85 minute one act show that captures the changing attitudes of the residences of an otherwise static city enclave. The sense of neighborhood acting as an anchor symbolizes both the status quo and the inhibition toward change that new thinkers such as Moore desperately need. He must get ride of his old house and he must not let his true love get away. See this play to understand each character’s choices."
Chicago Stage and Screen
- Somewhat Recommended
"...There is also a struggle between John's aunt (Alexandra Main) and best friend (Gabriel Franken), two competing real estate agents, as each try to get the business deal and overcome John's reticence. I am sure there are people out there anxious for the opportunity to smash themselves into The Gift's claustrophobic storefront space to listen to the misery and woe these people make for themselves. "Northwest Highway" may be true to life but so is indigestion. I just wouldn't call it entertainment and charge $30 to experience it."
