Chicago Tribune
- Recommended
"...Bizarrely, perhaps, this new theater company is offering a (visitor-friendly) retro Chicago experience, an iconic, in-your-face representation of what the Off-Loop experience is supposed to be like. But there is some venturing outside the city limits here and a fresh-feeling understanding that Chicago theater has always drawn from the road."
Chicago Sun Times
- Somewhat Recommended
"...To be sure, Johnny Clark and Stef Tovar -- the two actors who play the fatherless sons in this story -- beat the stuffings out of the play. And along the way these seemingly fearless actors, directed by Ron Klier, engage in a protracted stage fight (choreographed to the outer limits of safety by Ned Mochel) that might well have you fingering your cell phone in case an ambulance is needed. But there is something hollow and artificial feeling about Kolvenbach's work."
SouthtownStar
- Somewhat Recommended
"...Director Ron Klier stages the show superbly, and Tovar and Clark infuse the play's characters with a fierce intensity that - despite a poor script - holds one in rapt attention. If Route 66 can do so well with a bad script, one can only imagine what the new theater troupe will do once its members get hold of a really well-written piece of theater."
Chicago Reader
- Highly Recommended
"...John Kolvenbach's two-hander, about estranged brothers holed up in their crumbling boyhood home after one finds himself facing serious jail time, bears strong resemblance to Sam Shepard's True West, but Kolvenbach replaces Shepard's pulp mysticism with Mametian syncopation and muscularity. The result is by turns hilarious and harrowing, and except for unfortunate bits of mood music during poignant monologues, director Ron Klier drives nearly every moment home."
Windy City Times
- Somewhat Recommended
"...Sub-Sam Shepard-lite or poor man's Mamet? You could take your pick to describe John Kolvenbach's On An Average Day. A two-hander getting a far better production than it deserves from the Route 66 Theatre Company, the piece boasts a pair of brutally authentic performances from Stef Tovar and Johnny Clark. Unfortunately, the mostly superior performances can't justify a script that substitutes coherence and context with fisticuffs and more impassioned, nonsequiturial monologues than an Equity general audition."
Chicago Free Press
- Recommended
"...In Ron Klier’s electric staging (which played L.A. and now inaugurates a new Chicago theater) Clark gives needy Robert a hangdog vulnerability that disguises a paranoiac stalked by bad memories and other people’s real hate. Tovar’s Jack is a tightly coiled marvel of repression whose lies to protect his brother perilously unravel on this very un-average day."
EpochTimes
- Somewhat Recommended
"...I will tell you that the performances by these actors outweighs the script of Mr. Kolvenbach. I always look at a play with an open mind, wanting to be entertained and wanting to see the growth of the characters. I found that the characters did grow and I did learn more about their past from the script, but I was left with some questions in my mind as to why the brothers were really together on this day."
Copley News Service
- Recommended
"...Director Ron Klier does a heroic job of orchestrating the production in all its psychological and physical mayhem. Without the brilliant collaboration between Klier and his two-man cast “On an Average Day” could have been laughable."
Centerstage
- Somewhat Recommended
"...too many times, Clark carries the play and the connection between the two men, so essential to the plot line, seems lost. A couple of particularly unsubtle soundtrack choices pull the audience out of the story, especially during flashback scenes. Some may find the beginning a bit slow and it does lack the necessary tension, but give it 15 minutes and you will be hooked. This is the flagship production of Tovar's Route 66 Theatre Company and if "On an Average Day" is any indication, Route 66 is an edgy, welcome addition to the Chicago theater scene."
HollywoodChicago.com
- Highly Recommended
"...The performances by both Clark and Tovar are arguably two of the best Chicago has witnessed all year. These are performers who view and treat acting as a true craft. Being able to watch their work up close is as hypnotizing and surreal as experiencing a glass blower create his sculptures from mere sand."
Time Out Chicago
- Somewhat Recommended
"...Director Klier brings some solid atmospherics, in particular Ned Mochel’s tooth-loosening stage combat and Danny Cistone’s marvelously decrepit scenic design. (His judgment on a couple of payoff-underlining sound cues is more questionable.) Dodging the worst of the melodrama with a counterintuitively downplayed performance, Clark mostly sells the better-crafted if hard-to-buy role of Robert; Tovar flexes more muscle groups as Jack but doesn’t have all the answers for a character who’s just problematic as written."
ChicagoCritic
- Recommended
"...This intense psychological drama builds the tension tightly until in literally explodes on stage. This is a provocative piece that unfolds as part mystery, part psychological thriller and part family drama. Playwright John Kolvenbach keeps us engaged by tight writing and strong character development."
