The Seagull presented by Instrumental Theatre Company at Berger Park

Chicago Reader - Recommended

"...Instrumental's staging, directed by company artistic director Skylar Grieco, begins outside the Berger Park Cultural Center's north mansion (originally the home of pharmaceutical executive Samuel Gunder). The lakeside setting provides a felicitous backdrop for the first act, in which aspiring playwright Konstantin (Levi Denton-Hughes) presents his attempt to create "new forms" in theater. He also wants to stick a thumb in the eye of his actress mother, Arkadina (Jennifer Mohr), and her writer paramour, Boris Trigorin (Ian Rigg), whose work Konstantin thinks is pedestrian and pandering. His muse is Nina (Ruby Gibson), a young neighbor who dreams of escaping the suffocating home of her father and stepmother by going on the stage."

Chicagoland Musical Theatre - Highly Recommended

"...Above all—and appropriately for this last gasp of summer—their “Seagull” is as warmly approachable as a campfire. There are certainly pitfalls inherent to the notion of a new theater company putting on a play about artists wringing their hands over their art, but the wryly comic prologue of such self-absorption is handled deftly, and even before retiring inside, between the laughs, something more disquieting begins to sink in. (Direction is by Skyler Grieco—perfectly invisible, even with all the logistics of moving an audience around.)"