Chicago Tribune
- Highly Recommended
"...The greatest theater — and this is one of those great, not-to-be-missed, only-in-Chicago productions — is invariably rooted in simple human honesty. Even five minutes into this intimate and wrenching show, you know your heart is going to ache all night for Kendra Thulin's lovable lost soul. In this simple but truly beautiful performance, Thulin and her director, Robin Witt, get a crucial thing right. They allow you to see yourself in her struggle. Whomever you may be."
Chicago Reader
- Highly Recommended
"...Harper finds the strength to face long-suppressed doubts and terrors. Though the play's plot twists are sometimes contrived, Stephens captures the complexity of family relationships in which intimacy and denial are intertwined. Directed by Robin Witt, Steep Theatre's American premiere features finely wrought ensemble acting, with especially compelling performances by Kendra Thulin as Harper and Melissa Riemer as her estranged mother."
Windy City Times
- Highly Recommended
"...Travel, no matter the distance, cannot help but broaden the horizons of both the traveler and those witnessing the enlightenment-in-progress. We are not told precisely how Harper's abbreviated odyssey will affect her relationships with her family and neighbors, but so inexorably do we become immersed into Stephens' microcosmic universe that our certainty ( hope? ) that some change has been initiated equals our happiness over another fellow wayfarer's deliverance from the prison of their own self-imposed inertia."
Centerstage
- Highly Recommended
"...Many modern plays take on issues of connectivity, iPod-bred isolation and online anonymity, but none so dexterously as "Harper Regan." Under Robin Witt's confident direction, not only does each actor shine, but through appropriate pacing, hip, pertinent music choices and a flair for complex material, the show as a unit puts most Chicago theater to shame."
Time Out Chicago
- Highly Recommended
"...
It’s the kind of play tailor-made for Steep’s gifted ensemble. The action unfolds as a series of two- and three-person scenes, whose subtle tonal variations Witt orchestrates handily, despite occasional lapses in the actors’ London and Mancunian accents. Most notable is the production’s comfort with the play’s stutters and silences: the gleeful power game of Barnes’s silent count to 30, the quiet disconnections that signal the rifts in Harper’s marriage."
ChicagoCritic
- Somewhat Recommended
"...I’m not sure what to think of Harper Regan–both the play and the character. Harper’s journey and her escapades lacked clear cut motivation and seemed contrived by the playwright. Also the decision to have Kendra Thulin play Harper as a low-keyed befuddled woman didn’t seem to fit. If Harper’s stolid, bewildered, and benumbed existence forced her walk away, why did she return home to a child who hates her and to a loveless marriage to a weak man? The action of this British drama didn’t resonate with me."
Chicago Stage and Screen
- Not Recommended
"...The play doesn't know where it wants to go and I'm left feeling amazed and appalled that such a talented company as Steep would want to produce it. I often maintain that we should occasionally see really bad plays to help appreciate the good ones. If I am right then nearly everything I see for the remainder of the month should benefit from this atrocity."
Chicago Theater Beat
- Recommended
"...Exquisitely acted and painstakingly directed as it is, however, Harper Regan may be more satisfying for its cast than for audiences. The plot follows the breaking up or breaking out, depending on how you look at it, of Harper Regan, 40-ish, middle-class and troubled. Her father is dying, her boss is a creep, she hates her job, her husband’s out of work, she’s not getting along with her 17-year-old daughter, they had to move from her northern England hometown to unfamiliar suburban London, she’s not speaking to her mother, and she is deeply insecure."
