The Hero's Wife presented by 16th Street Theater at Berwyn Cultural Center

Chicago Tribune - Recommended

"...Lathrop's play doesn't give us all the answers, and the ending might be frustratingly ambiguous for some. But it's a lacerating and relevant portrait of how hard it can be for two people to find their way home to each other in the wake of the living nightmare of war."

Chicago Reader - Recommended

"...Aaron Christensen makes a great returning soldier; he's quite convincing as a strong, damaged man desperate to hide his deep personal problems. But the play really belongs to Alex Fisher, who over the course of a taut 80 minutes displays a full range of emotions, from sweet, emotionally open wife, happy to have her man back, to guarded, psychologically armored woman coping with life in the same house as a trained killer with a hair-trigger temper. In less adept hands, such a story could lapse into mere melodrama or, worse, didactic preachiness. But Lathrop's writing has a disarming honesty about it; she presents the facts of the case and lets us draw our own conclusions."

Chicago Stage and Screen - Highly Recommended

"...Whatever happened to Cameron, the returning hero in Aline Lathrop’s 90-minute play, The Hero’s Wife, now in a taut, unsettling world premiere at Berwyn’s 16th Street Theater, has left him scarred beyond recognition. Left without military support to make his transition back to civilian life, Cam’s young yoga-teacher wife, Karyssa, fights to get to know the man she loves. A lot of themes surface in The Hero’s Wife, including how the United States treats those who have served the country after retirement, the impact of PTSD, domestic violence and the attitudes toward violence in America, but it is the love story at the heart that makes us care. Under the fluid, propulsive direction of Ann Filmer and Miguel Nunez, Aaron Christensen as Cam and Alex Fisher as Karyssa engage in a physical and emotional battle for a life they can share."

Around The Town Chicago - Highly Recommended

"...Directed by Ann Filmer and Miguel Nunez, this is a very tense 90 minutes of theater and a look at the life of a military man and his much younger wife. Cameron ( a powerful performance by Aaron Christensen) a former Navy Seal has returned hom from his special duties. Karyssa ( superbly played by Alex Fisher), a much younger person, sees that he is different and that he has “night terrors”. Understand that their relationship was a short one. Eight weeks into their being together, Cameron was shipped back to complete his mission. Now he has come home, retired."

Picture This Post - Recommended

"...A man and a woman are lying in bed together when he is gripped with a night terror. He tries to punch her, but she rolls away in time, only to be struck by his second blow. She goes sprawling; he returns to regular sleep, unaware that anything has happened. This is the opening of Aline Lathrop's new play The Hero's Wife, now playing at Berwyn's 16th Street Theater. A fast-paced one-act, it uses two richly drawn characters to explore what it means to love someone with a mental illness and where to draw the line at how much self-sacrifice to invest in a marriage."