Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"...Thanks in no small measure to the caliber of his actors, but also due to the potency of the theme and richness of the writing, everything Brown puts on the intimate, understated Writers’ stage feels wholly and indisputably true."
Chicago Sun Times - Recommended
"...Neveu's subject is the enormous, wide-ranging price -- physical and psychic -- that war exacts. And he deals with it in the form of alternating conversations between three very different sets of people in three widely disparate locations, all connected by a single tragic event. These conversations, as often is the case with this playwright's work, are more notable for what is not said than for what is fully expressed. Neveu is the Thelonious Monk of Chicago playwrights."
Pioneer Press - Somewhat Recommended
"...This tri-part drama has all of Neveu's usual markings: elliptical dialogue; characters are fearful, menacing and absurdly funny; ambiguous, uneasy confrontations; and a pallor of violence shades even the quietest moments. As the final play in Neveu's trilogy dealing with war, "Old Glory" brings nothing new to the discussion of that sadly timely topic. But what brings the piece down is that Neveu fails to dramatize any aspect of war in a way that justifies revisiting the subject on stage for an hour and a half."
Chicago Reader - Recommended
"...there’s a lot to recommend in both Neveu’s script and William Brown’s production. Each recognizes the need for humor in the heart of darkness, and each has a cunning, mystery-novelish way of keeping the audience guessing. We never know until the last minute quite how any of the three conversations will work out—even the one that has to end in a death."
Windy City Times - Recommended
"...there's a lot to recommend in Old Glory, which receives a wonderfully acted world premiere under William Brown's assured direction at Writers' Theatre. Old Glory is the final play in Neveu's Trilogy: '04-'05-'06, which previously featured Harmless (staged at Timeline Theatre) and Weapon of Mass Impact (presented by A Red Orchid Theatre)."
EpochTimes - Recommended
"...There are lots of emotional ups and downs in this powerful production and lots of clues as to where Neveu is going as he deals with the way Americans respond to the "war on terror". In each of these three marked areas on a set designed by Keith Pitts, Director William Brown intertwines the action so that we can start to put the mystery together. This is a story filled with emotion for the parents, for the friend, for the young men who were forced to leave home and do things they would never have thought they could."
Centerstage - Somewhat Recommended
"...It’s interesting to see the various points of view played out, and, indeed, every character is on stage at once, to show the overlapping connections between them, but the overall makeup of the play tended to meander towards poignant, yet pointless, dramatic monologues with lines like “Cliché has slaughtered truth” and so on. For all of its violence, in some ways Old Glory treads too delicately around the subject of war, insanity and loss. It was as if the play was trying to side-step the taboos of talking about war by talking about comic-books-disguised-as-war-metaphors instead."
Chicago Stage Review - Somewhat Recommended
"...Playwright Brett Neveu examines the impacts of war on six interwoven lives in his newest play, Old Glory. The exposition vacillates between three overlapping scenarios that touch on the direct causes and effects of battle inspired madness and its tragic impact on the people in the periphery. The skillfully constructed script keeps the audience guessing but the clever puzzle lacks impact regarding the issues that it illustrates."
Time Out Chicago - Recommended
"...The more interesting exchanges occur between Tom McElroy and Philip Earl Johnson as the distraught dad and the officer and, most movingly, Penny Slusher and LaShawn Banks in the New Mexico scenes. Neveu’s characters don’t quite earn their emotional highs and lows, but this cast—especially Slusher, devastatingly cruel in her bereavement—is eminently watchable in its attempts."
ChicagoCritic - Highly Recommended
"...Neveu weaves his mystery with a richly textures subtext with several fascinating speeches and antidotal stories that adds fuel to the mystery. Moving from one twosome to another in a non-linear style, Old Glory builds into an emotionally sad, almost depressing, drama that grabs us early and takes us on a journey of coping with the effects of war on those related to the ultimate casualties of war."
