Chicago Tribune
- Recommended
"...Given the crowded off-Loop world, Shattered Globe will perhaps have to make more radical programmatic and conceptual choices in the future. It will need to make a distinctive case for itself. But this fine company — long synonymous with intensity, craft and truth — is most assuredly back. And Chicago is the richer."
Chicago Sun Times
- Recommended
"...McDonagh’s play is a strange brew that can shift dramatically in tone and emphasis from one production to the next. Sometimes it is utterly despairing, while at other times it is primarily blackly comic. Sometimes it stretches belief for shock effect, and at others it proves to be emotionally devastating. The Shattered Globe version, directed by Steve Scott, is a bit uneven, but it is the story’s deep, pervasive sense of loneliness that emerges most strongly, and that is for the best."
Chicago Reader
- Recommended
"...Steve Scott's staging captures the script's comedy and Gaelic rhythms while competently navigating the plot's twists and reversals. The performances, though, rarely rise above the level of good journeyman work. Longtime Shattered Globe ensemble members Linda Reiter and Eileen Niccolai would do well to adopt each other's dominant characteristics. As Mag, Reiter barks and domineers convincingly but fails to show the senile baby inside the harridan. Niccolai, meanwhile, conveys Maureen's sadness and isolation but very little of the ferocity that would drive a woman to douse her own mother with boiling oil. Consequently, the play's scenes of violence never seem to go far enough."
Time Out Chicago
- Recommended
"...
Scott’s uneven revival struggles to find its tone, dabbling in bleak desperation, dark humor and broad comedy alike. Any of these could be viable choices, but the admixture undercuts the deceptive momentum of McDonagh’s twisty script. Still, even though the relative ages of Scott’s cast members are all off—a fact that’s tough to gloss over in a staging as intimate as this—Niccolai and Reiter know each other well enough as performers to imbue their characters’ relationship with an amber-encased familiarity that makes us dread its inevitable, violent end."
ChicagoCritic
- Highly Recommended
"...Sporting thick authentic brogues, this four person cast marvelously navigates through all the dark humor and sardonic wit contained. Linda Reiter is the mother from hell and Eileen Niccolai brash antics covers her troubled past. The battle between these two dysfunctional souls will keep you riveted to your seats. This production strikes all the right notes. Welcome back Shattered Globe."
Chicago Stage and Screen
- Highly Recommended
"...The Beauty Queen of Leenane is an excellent play about being pushed to your limits by those you love. Not your average play about the bond between mother and daughter, more like complete opposites, the line a daughter is willing to cross to ensure her mother is out of the picture. Without a doubt considered to be one of Martin McDonagh's best, his voice behind Irish influence will go down in history as one of the best playwrights. Shattered Globe Theatre does a great job bringing his masterpiece to life."
Around The Town Chicago
- Highly Recommended
"...I found the story intriguing with some wonderful little events ( that I really cannot tell you about or I would destroy the events and the outcome of this brilliantly written piece). There is mystery and intrigue and while it is a romantic story filled with biting humor, it is also a tragedy for all of the main characters with the exception of Pato’s brother Ray ( Kevin Viol)."
Chicago Theater Beat
- Highly Recommended
"...Director Steve Scott keeps a nicely controlled rein on the storytelling here: Less is infinitely more as Niccolai’s Maureen simmers in a slow but inexorable burn toward an explosion of rage. Under the ruthlessly demanding edicts of her mother, Maureen moves with precise control but has the wild-eyed, feral look of a fox desperate enough to chew off its own leg to escape the trap it is entangled in. As Mag, Reiter scrunches her face into a permanent gargoyle grimace, making the character both monstrous and pathetic – and making Maureen’s plight all the more untenable. Something has to give between mother and daughter before the last scene, and so it does, with all the violence and horror one expects from a McDonagh play."
