The Tempest presented by Midsommer Flight at Various Locations

Chicago Reader - Recommended

"...Wolf's compact staging comes in at a tidy 90 minutes, but nothing feels rushed here. In addition to Monday's powerful sorceress, there are strong performances from Richard J. Eisloeffel as Caliban (more brooding Lost Boy than malevolent "mooncalf") and from Kat Moraros and Tom McGrath as Trinculo and Stephano, the drunken servants who join forces with Caliban to try to overthrow Prospero. Elizabeth Rentfro's music, performed by Elana Weiner-Kaplow's Ariel and her flower-children band of sprites, brings a folk-pop bounciness that contrasts with the more somber musings of Monday's Prospero on mortality and redemption."

Windy City Times - Recommended

"...Richard Eisloeffel is an interesting choice for Caliban, a person forced into servitude and constantly mocked. There's something poignant in that Eisloeffel's Caliban is not costumed/made up differently than any other performer, but is still referred to as monstrous and beastly by all. To me, it serves to highlight that no one deserves that abuse, and even characters we think of as honorable are the worst offenders. Stephanie Monday is booming and commanding as Prospero with a stage-filling presence that resonates, and Elana Weiner-Kaplow is a whirlwind as Ariel, the nimble connective tissue binding everyone-not at all shabby for a free evening in the park."

Stage and Cinema - Recommended

"...Midsommer Flight's rightly sprightly production features a rich score of minstrel music, rapid-fire set switches (including a ship with a human prow), supple and serviceable costume changes, and lots of convulsive entrances and exits. By the end the park, so much manufactured nature, has been domesticated by all-shaping art. It's become the seemingly inevitable backdrop for a trove of sprawling make-believe."

Rescripted - Highly Recommended

"...Midsommer Flight features the best combination of elements one can find in the theatre: Free, and Quality. William Shakespeare’s The Tempest marks the company’s eighth summer of free Shakespeare performances as an Arts Partner in Chicago. Many productions of this revenge tale/ comedy can get bogged down in all the alternative readings and academia. Under the clever direction of Beth Wolf, however, Midsommer Flight revels in theatricality and proves that The Tempest has a role in our daily lives."

Splash Magazine - Recommended

"...The minimal props/sound effects combined with the well-phrased language, the original antique/baroque sounding music and the wonderfully gleeful antics of Ariel and The Monsters to create a larger vista than that incorporated by the park. The sights and sounds of the waves hitting the vessel or threatening thunder were nicely timed with the performers movements; it is not at all difficult to "see" the shipwreck, the forest, the magical effects."