Chicago Tribune - Recommended
"...Certainly, Saracho and her director, Hallie Gordon, have found a way to make Esperanza’s world come alive with the most ebullient kind of human expression. The staging is imaginative and enjoyable—you sense the day-to-day rhythms of Esperanza’s community, its joys, its sorrows, its longings, its light, its darkness. Gordon has successfully staged the book’s scenes of the innocent joys of youth, typified by the bike ride that Esperanza (Sandra Delgado) takes through the neighborhood with her friends Sally (Belinda Cervantes) and Rachel (newcomer Christina Nieves, who packs some terrific joie-de-vivre into her fine performance). There is a lot of infectious spirit in the show, which is suffused pleasantly with music, yet the adults of the neighborhood (mostly played by Mari Stratton and Ricardo Gutierrez) clearly reveal their inner pain. All of that works very well and fans of the book will appreciate the integrity and fidelity of the piece."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...I would happily exchange a ticket to any big fat Broadway show for one to "The House on Mango Street," Tanya Saracho's beguiling, bittersweet, music-infused stage adaptation of the bestselling 1984 novel by Sandra Cisneros about growing up on the streets of Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood in the early 1960s."
Chicago Reader - Somewhat Recommended
"...Tanya Saracho was a great choice to adapt Sandra Cisneros's classic book for this Steppenwolf for Young Adults production. Even though Saracho's script fails to supply a firm narrative arc, her gift for heartfelt, cut-to-the-bone storytelling lends itself well to capturing the textures of Cisneros's novel-in-vignettes about Esperanza, a Latina preteen who longs to escape her shabby world."
Windy City Times - Somewhat Recommended
"...Tanya Saracho's adaptation is not without its flaws as it tries to give narrative shape to the book's multiple-vignette structure, but it manages to communicate the story's core message: growing up and learning to embrace the life we're given as opposed to accusing it of holding us back from what we want to become. Some scenes, namely the ones that translate seamlessly from page to stage, illustrate this better than others."
Centerstage - Highly Recommended
"...Filled with short vignettes of scenes and people who pass through a Northwest Side neighborhood, which flow without a clear storyline or plot, The House on Mango Street doesn't lend itself well to stage adaptation. But adapter Tanya Sarancho managed to create a magical production of music, movement and words."
- Rosalind Cummings-Yeates
ChicagoCritic - Somewhat Recommended
"...The 90-minute play seems much longer, dragging as Esperanza moves towards adulthood, and ending with a pat assertion that while she will ultimately be able to leave Mango Street, she will also yearn to return throughout her life."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Highly Recommended
"...There are many emotions in this beautiful story. We laugh, we cry, we express fear and uncertainty as this young lady makes new friends, learns about the cultures of others, experiences her first high heels, feels shame and desire and learns that life is not all that it should or could be."
