Chicago Tribune
- Somewhat Recommended
"...Working in collaboration with the theater company Teatro Vista, Zacek's honorable and largely well-acted production mostly does right by Cruz's poetry. Gentle, measured and thoughtful, the production has some quite moving moments, even if there's little to surprise you, sear the soul, or lift you out of your seat."
Chicago Sun Times
- Recommended
"...The latest bottle of Cruz's perfume to be uncorked can be found bearing the label "A Park in Our House," now in a joint production by Victory Gardens Theater and Teatro Vista. It is being staged in a fittingly intimate Victory Gardens Greenhouse space, where director Dennis Zacek and his ideally chosen cast allow the contents to waft our way with just the right amount of delicacy, despair, eroticism and sense of heightened expectation."
Daily Herald
- Recommended
"...A Park in Our House, by Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz, depicts the hardships -- material and emotional -- endured by a family living in 1970s Cuba. The talented cast of six delivers an impressive performance in a play rife with emotions and sensuality, as well as moments of vivacious humor."
SouthtownStar
- Somewhat Recommended
"...This slice-of-life work by Cuban-American playwright Nilo Cruz, making in its Chicago premiere at Victory Gardens Theater in collaboration with Teatro Vista, takes so long to unfold that by the end of the first act, we still don't know where it is going."
Chicago Reader
- Somewhat Recommended
"...the script's hothouse poetry and overstated metaphors tend to obscure the crushing difficulties of life under Castro's regime. Dennis Zacek's nimble Victory Gardens/Teatro Vista staging succeeds, however, at fleshing out the characters' innate decency, and the dynamic Charin Alvarez is enchanting as the embittered but still passionate wife."
Windy City Times
- Recommended
"...Under the direction of Dennis Zacek, a sturdy cast of Teatro Vista regulars deliver uniformly elegant performances belying the occasional clumsiness of their text."
Chicago Free Press
- Somewhat Recommended
"...Everything here feels, well, filtered, as if Cruz were trying to recreate a bunch of dreams from a very troubled night. Interestingly, Samuel Ball’s latticework set, with its sultry colors and mysterious passageways, serves the moods well, as do the well-honed performances. But “A Park in Our House” is ultimately as insubstantial as its imaginary title setting."
EpochTimes
- Recommended
"...Directed by Dennis Zacek, this collaboration with Teatro Vista is a solid production that teaches as well as entertains. This play will provoke thought and make the viewer ask questions as to why the people wanted to have Castro in power. What did they expect? And, what did they end up with? Samuel Ball's set is very real and with the lighting effects by Partick Chan, we can almost feel the heat of the Cuban summer.Judith Lundberg's costumes and Mishail Fiskel's sound complete this picture."
Time Out Chicago
- Somewhat Recommended
"...Here the playwright stretches his tightrope so tautly in act one—sexual tension between a teenage daughter and a foreign physicist, a suicidal family member whose dreams were crushed by communism—that we can’t wait to see his characters fall from it. Unfortunately, they fall instead because Cruz lets the rope sag in the second act, supplanting speeches (albeit beautiful) for drama. Zacek’s direction is always capable, but more proper than passionate, and more exoticized than authentically exotic."
ChicagoCritic
- Somewhat Recommended
"...To this reviewer A Park in Our House is a clear example of a production where the total effect is much less than the sum of the parts. There are some fine, though not uniformly so, performances. Samuel Ball’s stylized set is beautiful to look at, though it suggests a beach house more than decaying Havana. There is humor, though the show is generally slow-paced beyond the point of pain. And there are the ceaseless symbols: individually they are appealing, but somehow they don’t congeal into a coherent mass and the result is an unsubtle glop that is more trite than astute."
