Chicago Tribune
- Highly Recommended
"...Halberstam catches the right mood and style — grandiose homage but with tongue just an inch inside the cheek. His visual work is especially elegant here. With a suitably grand set from Brian Bembridge, Halberstam moves the suckers around to create all manner of pleasing pictures."
Chicago Sun Times
- Highly Recommended
"...Each and every one of the actors is spot-on. The easily dashing Gregory and the snappily sexy Cannon (with her Audrey Hepburn-like accent) are neatly paired, as are the poker-faced Ulrich and the bubbly Liebow. Spidle puts a wonderfully comic spin on his glad-handing working-class detective. Brearley is perfectly pale, defensive and tense. And McCauley has a great jack-in-the-box nuttiness about him. As for Van Slyke, he brings a strange, haunting gravitas to the proceedings, endowing Christie's writing with a breathtaking streak of existentialism."
Daily Herald
- Highly Recommended
"...The nimbly plotted whodunit engages the intellect and keeps audiences guessing. Christie wasn’t known for her elegant prose, but the play has enough droll, 1930s-style banter to keep it interesting....First-class production values, especially Brian Sidney Bembridge’s gorgeous black and white set and striking rainstorm and Robert Christen’s exquisite lighting."
SouthtownStar
- Highly Recommended
"...This joy of a mystery doesn't miss a suspenseful beat because of superb performances. There are Timothy Gregory and Carey Cannon as singles who you know will end up together, Don Brearley as a doctor with a very shady past, Craig Spidle as a has-been private detective and Deanna Dunnagan as a Bible-toting spinster."
Chicago Reader
- Highly Recommended
"...Director Michael Halberstam and a superb cast treat us to an elegant revival--a smorgasbord of diverse complex characters who gradually turn on one another."
Windy City Times
- Recommended
"...A heavy-lifting ensemble ( featuring such regional favorites as Craig Spidle, Deanna Dunagan, Larry McCauley, Joe Van Slyke, Timothy Gregory and Carey Cannon ) hoists suspension-of-belief in volume as cumbersome as that required of its audience, their industry resurrecting all the freshness and suspense displayed by this mossy museum artifact at its premiere in 1944. The real stars of the show, however, are Brian Bembridge, Rick Sims and Bob Christen, who together create an ocean vista so meteorologically accurate, we can almost smell the salt spray."
Chicago Free Press
- Highly Recommended
"...Crackling and cascading, Michael Halberstam’s taut staging makes good on the menace, his crackerjack cast applying years of thespian experience to their immaculate performances. It’s well worth the trip to Oak Brook to find out, well, what you can’t find out."
Time Out Chicago
- Recommended
"...the cast doesn’t bat knowing winks at us; instead, this sensibly straightforward staging keeps its eyes wide open—and, in the tension-ratcheting second act, ours as well. You have to hand it to Christie, the old dear: She knew her way around murder-mystery structure, which still retains the power to keep us sixth-guessing. Led by the appealing pair Carey Cannon and Timothy Gregory, Halberstam’s well-cast actors (though in dire need of a dialect coach) have a grand time with both scary and funny."
ChicagoCritic
- Recommended
"...This excellent work will keep you guessing with some funny moments thrown in as it swiftly engages us as amateur detectives. This is a smart, flawless production that offers fine entertainment. You’ll enjoy the hunt for the killer."
Chicago Stage and Screen
- Somewhat Recommended
"...The character contrast between Deanna Dunagan's prissy and pious Emily Brent and Carey Cannon's lovely and free-spirited secretary Vera Claythorne is most delightful here. And when Ms. Cannon appears in designer Keith Pitts' glamorous red evening gown, she practically sets the stage on fire. Which is more than can be said of most of the rest of the cast."
