In The Curious Hold Of The Demeter presented by The Incurable Theater at Chicago Cultural Center

Chicago Reader - Recommended

"...Director-designer Jennifer Friedrich captures the movie's expressionist visual style with shadowy lighting and sinister black-and-white set design, and actor-designer Damien Hinojosa is an undead ringer for the screen classic's hideous, rodent-like Orlock. But Jill Summers's meandering script never develops the premise beyond a series of sight gags: the creepy count reading girlie mags, lifting handweights, doing a vaudevillian song-and-dance routine, etc."

Centerstage - Highly Recommended

"...Throughout the long journey in the Russian schooner, "The Demeter," this quickly paced, one-hour play is written and narrated in a precise gothic monotone by Jill Summers, whose ornate and repetitious prose skillfully juxtaposes the Count's misadventures, which include every kind of injustice imaginable, from getting caught masturbating to a Victoria's Secret catalogue by his un-dead brides to chasing his recently detached (and flying) penis around the room only to have it caught and smoked like a blunt by a beautiful woman standing nearby."

Edge - Somewhat Recommended

"...Despite the play’s rich concept, impressive costumes and multifaceted attempt at storytelling (puppetry, shadow play, masks), there simply isn’t much actually happening. This at first seems appropriate, as the play is in many ways about boredom, but, alas, constructing a play around boredom makes little sense, even if French literary critic Roland Barthes once wondered, "Might boredom be my form of hysteria?" Orlock’s hallucinations, recollections, embarrassing masturbatory memories, and even song-and-dance routines pass by one after the other, neither hysterical or even all that interesting."

Time Out Chicago - Recommended

"...The comic possibilities of a “humanized” Orlock, à la 2000’s Shadow of the Vampire, are fully realized by the compulsively watchable Hinojosa, who, in the title role, is like a fright-show Buster Keaton. And Friedrich and Hinojosa’s sometimes striking stagecraft, from puppets to masks to shadow play, is artfully integrated throughout. Energetic supporting work from Tamblyn and Williams, along with Daniel Knox’s fine atmospheric score, puts the finishing touches on this quirky treat."