Chicago Tribune
- Highly Recommended
"... Both Petro and Boucher are fascinating and their interactions are complex. This is a play perched on the very knife edge of eroticism, and at Strawdog, it sits there deliciously and dangerously. Instead of playing the usual femme fatale with a posh accent and an MFA, the superb Petro reminds us of two crucial things about Anna: She was not very long ago just one of those pretty London girls, hanging out with escorts and only dimly aware of her limited shelf-life. And she is now, as she always was, vulnerable, mostly alone, and ever in search of intimacy. Maybe even of the kind she can't control."
Chicago Sun Times
- Highly Recommended
"...For her riveting Strawdog Theatre Company revival of this 1971 Pinter classic, director Kimberly Senior has tapped the talents of two extraordinary young actresses wholly new to me — Abigail Boucher (as Kate) and Michaela Petro (as Anna) — and paired them with veteran Strawdog actor John Henry Roberts (as Deeley). The result is a subtle yet incendiary rendering of what is quite the psycho-sexual power game, complete with time-warped resentments."
Chicago Reader
- Highly Recommended
"... Kimberly Senior returns to the company to direct this taut, ultimately haunting portrait of middle-aged marrieds Deeley and Kate, whose lives are disturbed by the arrival of Anna, Kate's flatmate from 20 years back. Michaela Petro plays Anna with a stunning mix of cool sexual bravado and vulnerability, while Abigail Boucher's Kate and John Henry Roberts's Deeley bring subtle shifts to this opaque but fascinating meditation on the ghosts of youth."
Windy City Times
- Highly Recommended
"...Pinter wrote his play in 1971, but with the proliferation in 2011 of devices for altering photographs, audiotapes and cyberdocuments, re-inventing the past has never been easier. Yes, being cast as the princess over whom knights fight in their imaginations might be flattering, up to a point—but in the end, who is rightfully entitled to the last word on your life story? Yourself, or a pair of squabbling rivals arguing their own importance?"
Centerstage
- Recommended
"... I certainly think that any student of theater or anyone interested in seeing theater in Chicago should see this production. The three actors in the show tackle the text with ferocity; I thought Michaela Petro’s Anna particularly predatory, possessed of a Fellini-esque angle to her eyes as she stares down John Henry Roberts’ Deeley. Abigail Boucher, faced with the daunting task of playing Kate in this difficult play, does so with a distinctive flavor of British insouciance that is worth watching closely. The whole production is framed nicely in Michael Mroch’s simple set; Aly Renee Amidei’s costumes nicely evoke a European, metropolitan 60’s style. The show has many merits."
Time Out Chicago
- Highly Recommended
"... Anna comments on the silence that blankets the home; Kimberly Senior’s direction impressively handles Pinter’s pauses. The weight that exists in the unspoken exemplifies the specificity Senior and her ensemble employ in defining the characters’ complex, mercurial relationships."
ChicagoCritic
- Recommended
"...Pinter is deliberately vague and crafty in Old Times. Was there a gay relationship between Anna and Kate? Or is Kate and Anna really the same person? Is the play reality or a mind game between Deeley and Anna? Pinter deftly presents the power of our memories to play tricks on us. There is truth and then there is what we think happened. This psychological drama will keep you guessing and totally engaged. Michaela Petro and Abigail Boucher exude pent-up sexual desire as both do their part in the three-way battle. My only complaint with this powerful production was that, at times, all three players spoke so softly as to be hard to hear. But each presented and developed the dramatic tension necessary for the play to be riveting. Pinter’s classic work is in good hands here."
Chicago Stage and Screen
- Highly Recommended
"... This short 1971 shocker by Harold Pinter deserves a short review--perhaps punctuated by those famous Pinter pauses that add menace to the late playwright’s captivating uncertainty. “Old Times,” despite its name, is no exercise in nostalgia. It reunites supposed best friends from college days, then piles on the doubts as the husband of one of these women seems to belong to both of them and to neither. Strawdog Theatre Company’s crackling staging, smoothly engineered by Kimberly Senior, keeps the questions flowing. It’s smart enough to deliver just enough fascination to neutralize our frustration about getting so few answers."
Let's Play at ChicagoNow
- Highly Recommended
"... Pinter riddles an intellectual teaser. Each of the characters shifts alliances and circumstances during the reunion meet-up. Just as I connect two dots to get a picture, Pinter hits the scrambler button. Dots fly into a new semblance. A different depiction emerges from the shake-up. Using silence and timing to perfection, Director Kimberly Senior builds the intrigue and the questions. The talented threesome draws their own fuzzy lines between adoration and obsession, lust and hate, life and death."
Chicago Theater Beat
- Highly Recommended
"... The play is a tidy 70 minutes with no intermission, and yet I got the feeling that I’d travelled deeply into the inner lives of these characters. This is one play I won’t get out of my head for a long time to come."
