Chicago Tribune
- Recommended
"...Even though the childhood-friends-torn-apart-by-adult-hatred theme feels like well-trod ground, Kauzlaric and Waller fill the tiny bare stage with believable pre-teen energy and quicksilver emotions. I found myself caring about what happens to these two endearing lads, despite some predictability in the story."
Chicago Reader
- Highly Recommended
"... In Jeff Christian's brisk, athletic staging for Seanachai Theatre Company, Robert Kauzlaric and Dan Waller play not only the boys but everyone else in their world--troubled parents, eccentric shopkeeps, neighborhood thugs. Their characterizations are crisp, their accents flawless, their depiction of boyhood boisterous, touching, and true."
Windy City Times
- Recommended
"...Mojo Mickybo is a tour de force for actors Robert Kauzleric and Dan Waller, who almost redeem the predictability of playwright Owen McCafferty's story of innocence lost in 1970 Belfast. When the writing veers into precious-bordering-on-twee ( as it often does ) , it's the performances that keep things from becoming as saccharine sweet as a Hallmark moment."
Time Out Chicago
- Recommended
"...While Seanachaí’s bare-bones black-box staging at first underscores the actorly tour de force, over the course of the hour the imaginative landscape of Belfast emerges: the bus drivers and ice-cream sellers, the women on street corners, the whole fabric of shared dreams and disappointments, painstakingly woven and too easily torn."
ChicagoCritic
- Recommended
"...This is Irish storytelling rich in little details and zany personae distinctly told from the memories of kids struggling to make sense of their world during the bombings and killing in Belfast. There are loads of humor in the wacky characters and the child-like views of these two kids from both the Catholic and Orange neighborhoods in Belfast. We meet the dysfunctional relatives of Mojo and Mickybo. Robert Kuzlaric and Dan Waller are terrific as the kids caught in a bittersweet tale of innocence lost. The sheer energy and the manic pace of this 70 minutes show wins us with its charm and the honesty of the performances. Playwright Owen McCafferty calls Mojo Mickybo a tale steeped in “the absurdity of sectarianism.” I call it a tale filled with loads of laughs."
Chicago Stage and Screen
- Somewhat Recommended
"...McCafferty gives us little more than a boy's childhood memory, as two school age pals confront neighborhood bullies, poverty, violence and parental disillusionment while trying to live up to their screen heroes, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Director Jeff Christian and his two highly engaging and charismatic stars prove just how far they can take a vast imagination on a small bare stage. The Irish dialect is hard on the ears though and it's thick enough here to cut with a knife. Fortunately Kauzlaric and Waller's performance are so physically detailed and entertaining they compensate for the dialect barrier. They don't quite make up for the very sparse script, which would just about disappear were the performances any less vigorous."
