Sophocles: Seven Sicknesses Reviews

Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended

"...When you go to Greek drama —even at Apollonian-style theaters where they like to specialize in gravitas —you go for revelation. You want to encounter someone's take on these great ancient plays and feel, all at once, their timeless power and their fresh resonance. Graney will, I guarantee, give you gobs of that. And it's not easy to do. His overall sensibility here seems influenced by the late British provocateur Joe Orton ("What the Butler Saw"), who is not the guy who usually comes to mind when you think Sophocles, the most balanced and realistic of the three Greek tragedians whose work has survived. But Graney nonetheless makes his case that the violence, passion and dark comedy that inevitably flows when Greek tragedies are staged today can be fused to strikingly complex yet accessible ends. Why not stick all these characters in a hospital? They're sick and desperate enough. And they love to talk about their blood lines, which makes Graney's flowing tubes of red stuff all the more apropos."

Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended

"...Graney’s cast of a dozen actors is exceptional as they bring impressively different physical and emotional colors to multiple roles and wail out Kevin O’Donnell’s ballads. Erin Barlow, Tien Doman and Lindsey Gave are stunning in all the female roles, with Jeff Trainor, Zeke Sulkes, Geoff Button, Walter Briggs, Robert McLean, Ryan Bourque and Maximillian Lapine as the embattled men. Sarah Jackson and Shannon Matesky nail every punchline as the traditional Greek chorus which here takes the form of two very sassy Red Cross nurses who matter-of-factly amputate limbs and swab the bloody stage floor of the hospital set designed by Tom Burch and Maria Defabo. That stage rises above Aegean-style turquoise and white tile banquette seating for the audience."

Centerstage - Highly Recommended

"...The evening is done right is so many ways. The human experience is recognized; to attend this production is to participate in one of the most effective community-building activities ever invented by culture. You will be fed. You can mingle with the actors, who make no attempt to sequester themselves from the audience. You sit on sofa-like benches, are encouraged to stretch out, get comfortable, even move about if you cannot see and would like to switch your seat."

Time Out Chicago - Highly Recommended

"...A phenomenal 12-person ensemble enacts Graney’s mammoth, modern take (permeated by snippets of songs from Bruce Springsteen’s 1980 lamentation The River, sung by the actors to new arrangements by Kevin O’Donnell). As the plays stack up during the nearly four-hour evening—some wryly humorous, others gut-wrenching, nearly all filled with gory bloodletting—we begin to sense a through-line. As went Sophocles’ ancient Greeks, fueled by vengeance, vanity and misguided ideas of honor, so go nations today. At the play’s end, with the stage riddled with the bodies of the needlessly dead, the more naive nurse asks, “Is that it?” “Nope,” says the other. “There’ll be more.”"