Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"...The resulting production is really something: I've watched Shannon on stage and screen for some 30 years and this performance is right up there with his best work, especially when it comes to his longstanding ability to dissect masculinity and reveal one of those men who feels deeply but so lacks the language of emotional vulnerability that his communication skills are authoritarian at best and, at worst, bestial."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...Running through June 9 and directed by the playwright, "Turret" is a multi-genre labyrinth that incorporates sci-fi, thriller and horror into a story that depicts the devastation of loneliness, the pull of parental love and that peculiar, unnerving strain of deja vu that hits so hard it makes you question the soundness of your mind and memory."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...If you’ve been looking for the 21st century’s answer to Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, your wait is over. Levi Holloway’s Turret, now in a world premiere (also directed by the playwright) with A Red Orchid Theatre, taps into the same existential dread and odd father-son dynamics present in Beckett’s 1957 masterpiece."
Stage and Cinema - Recommended
"...If you had to define the word turret, what would an easy definition be? Well, I love castles, so I know a turret was often the corner where a guard could be positioned. But a turret is also that rotating structure you've seen in Star Wars on the Millennium Falcon from which they can shoot ammunition. Defining writer/director Levi Holloway's world premiere play Turret, which opened at Chopin Theatre last weekend, stunningly mounted by A Red Orchid, is not so easy."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Highly Recommended
"...The feeling this work engenders is congruent with the anxiousness of my world view. It was cathartic to travel the journey with these masterful actors who told their story with heart and truth. Holloway has hit a nerve here while also sparking serious thoughts about what it is to be a man in dangerous times. All I can say is see this show if you can snag a ticket and get comfortable with the discomfort."
Around The Town Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...There are highs and lows, laughs and sadness inn this story. The play runs for 2 hours and 25 minutes with one 10 minute intermission. I will not give away any of the special moments in this slick production, and will tell you that the lighting effects ( (Mike Durst) and sound ( Jeffrey Levin, who also did the original music) along with the fight direction ( Max Fabian) make this a spell binder that will hold your attention and grab you from start to finish."
Chicago Theatre Review - Recommended
"...This is a play that moves very slowly, often creating the feeling that it's happening in real time. The audience experiences the sensation of an endless cycle of sameness that each day underground presents to these characters. When some minute change in the status quo appears, it takes on monumental importance. While I personally prefer Levi Holloway's terrifying GREY HOUSE, and hope that A Red Orchid will revive it in the near future, his new play about survival underground offers a quiet, foreboding and omnipresent feeling of terror that's hard to shake."
Buzznews.net - Highly Recommended
"...Something special has been afoot at Chopin Theatre for the past few weeks: the world premiere of “Turret,” written and directed by Levi Holliday. Created as a vehicle for two-time Oscar nominee Michael Shannon, the production by A Red Orchid Theatre (Shannon is a founding member) has turned into so much more, signaling to the Chicago theater community what it takes to produce a sell-out show that generates infinite buzz as it progresses toward the end of its run, extended to June 22 to accommodate the crowds."
The Fourth Walsh - Recommended
"...Playwright and Director Levi Holloway debuts a new sci-fi mystery. In an isolated bunker, two survivors coexist on a regime of routine and whiskey. Holloway drops the audience in a day-in-the-life of Green (played by a commanding Michael Shannon) and Rabbit (played by a versatile Travis A. Knight). Rabbit is running on a treadmill. Green is asking him a series of questions. A silent Rabbit's responses appear as computer-generated answers. The exercise is followed by Green telling Rabbit not to forget to have his nectar. Rabbit pours himself a cloudy liquid substance.This daily ritual is repeated multiple times. Same questions, varying responses. It's like a dystopian "Ground Hog Day"."
Third Coast Review - Highly Recommended
"...Turret, a new show written and directed by Chicago playwright Levi Holloway, is born from a cinematic legacy of horror, apocalypse, and suspense, and it uses the mechanisms of live theater to explore the bonds we hope stand the tests of time and heartbreak. This production celebrates A Red Orchid Theatre's 30th anniversary, written and directed by ensemble member Holloway and starring co-founders Michael Shannon and Lawrence Grimm, as well as the company's associate artistic director Travis A. Knight."
Chicago On Stage - Highly Recommended
"...Set in the post-apocalyptic future, Levi Holloway's riveting Turret is more than the trying to survive the end of the world drama it clearly is on the surface. Below that surface, it is a thoroughly engaging examination of masculinity as well as the need, the desperate need, for some kind of connection with someone else. It is also a puzzle box of a play, in which things may not be as they appear and even death might not be permanent; you will need to watch the entire show to begin to really understand it."
BroadwayWorld - Somewhat Recommended
"...Ultimately, I find TURRET perplexing. Sure, it’s a slow-burning dystopian story, but I wish the play itself had given us a little more to chew on and that Holloway had revealed more answers sooner. I think then that would give more room for the underlying questions posed about the nature of human existence."
NewCity Chicago - Somewhat Recommended
"...The veteran Shannon—a cofounder of A Red Orchid—displays his gift for playing saturnine characters who simmer with a brooding, secretive energy. Knight, too, holds the stage well, his wide smile and boyish presence flickering occasionally into torment and rage. Lawrence Grimm is suitably batty as Birdy, a bearskin-wrapped, tux-clad “civilian” visitor to the bunker who serves little dramatic function, other than to break up the monotony. But with their characters so undefined, so lacking in coherent backstory, the performers can’t find real tension or movement within the scenes. And so their acting tends to get larger and louder, rather than tighter and deeper."