Chicago Tribune
- Recommended
"...Marilyn fans can easily quibble with the harsh spotlight Chayefsky casts. And, sure, it's not exactly news that Hollywood in the 1950s was an unforgiving place for vulnerable young women. Chayefsky's script has some creak in its joints. But Mossman's staging (including some evocative film segments assembled in Robert Stockwell's video design, projected on a screen at one end of the intimate playing area) mostly blows away the dust to reveal some genuinely stellar performances. In addition to Stark's go-for-broke, close-to-the-bone emotional turbulence, I was struck by Maria Stephens' Lorraine, the starlet's mother whose own show-biz dreams curdle into religiosity."
Chicago Sun Times
- Highly Recommended
"...At the center of “The Goddess” is Emily Ann Faulkner (later renamed Rita Shawn), who grows up in small-town, Depression era Maryland, and is the entirely unwanted child of a young and restless mother whose husband has left her. Emily will eventually “succeed” where her mother failed. But by the time she finds her place in the Hollywood sun — the result of some indefinable warmth and availability that emerges on film — she will have married too many men (most of them as lost and troubled as her own father), repeated history by abandoning her young daughter, performed far too many casting couch favors, become hooked on alcohol and pills, and then, when all else has failed, turned to God. Nothing can fill the emptiness."
Chicago Reader
- Somewhat Recommended
"...he script favors long, analytical monologues over action-wow, did they love psychology back in the 50s-but Lee Stark plays the hell out of Emily Ann, fully inhabiting all her incarnations as she delivers those monologues, from lonely, starstruck teenager to giddy war bride to hysterical, drugged-out mess. It's a tremendous performance. Others in director John Mossman's cast work hard to keep up; Maria Stephens, hilarious as her mother, and Josh Odor, sympathetic as her second husband, succeed."
Time Out Chicago
- Somewhat Recommended
"...While the script needs work to make the audience fully invest in Rita's journey, Lee Stark does a remarkable job showing the character's deterioration over time. An incredibly passionate performer whose presence fills the intimate space, Stark creates a portrait of a woman always desperate to escape. Initially that desire takes the form of a Hollywood dream for a promiscuous young girl constantly seeking attention. Once she gets the attention, she wants to escape again, this time searching not for excitement but numbness, through drugs and alcohol. Odor's quiet but confident sex appeal balances nicely with Stark's intensity, creating the kind of spark the rest of the production needs."
Stage and Cinema
- Highly Recommended
"...Everything feels right in The Artistic Home's production-especially the casting and the costumes (period-perfect garb by Lynn Sandberg). The great gift throughout is the "goddess" herself: Lee Stark's Rita is a force of nature gone very wrong. Exploding with the rapid-fire, machine-gun dialogue that's a Chayevsky signature, she's a complex, quicksilver bundle of contradictions, combing Marilyn's morose self-doubt with the brittle glamour of another Rita and also Ava. (If Stark doesn't get a Jeff Award, well, as Rita screams at her mother, "There ain't no God!") It's lacerating, agonizing bravura acting, strongly supported by a 17-member cast who, like Rita, can never be loved enough."
ChicagoCritic
- Highly Recommended
"...Paddy Chayefsky's naturalistic script with his spot-on dialogue that contains sharp comments, metaphors, and quips flows nicely in this epic tale of fame and loneliness. We feel Rita's pain and misery. We see that stardom, riches, and glory are nothing if we suffer from feeling unloved. The Goddes is a beautiful play that demonstrates how an epic film can, and does, work better live onstage especially in an intimate storefront venue. Kudos to Mossman and Stark for rendering such an ambitious world premiere. We need to experience the greatness of Paddy Chayefsky on stage. Paddy would be proud of The Artistic Home's production of The Goddess. Let's home to see Marty, Network. and The Bachelor Party at the Artistic Home in the coming years. But, for now, catch The Goddess - you'll be glad you"
Chicago Theatre Review
- Somewhat Recommended
"...The Goddess is a hard play to sit through. There have been so many stories, in recent years, of the rich gone rotten, of the great dream of show business exposed as general prostitution, of all one's struggles to become someone better failing utterly, that even a classic example seems like gross excess. Still, it is a story assailed artistically and by and large with good grace, be it Stark's flickering from delightful to disturbed or the flash and shimmer of a 30's house dress. We have to recall that the stations of the cross are supposed to lead us to greater empathy and thankfulness in this mad world of ours."
