Chicago Tribune
- Highly Recommended
"...The key performance in a uniformly excellent cast comes from Michelle Beck, whose pitch-perfect Viola captures both the requisite attention to sexual desire and a certain geeky, spontaneous adolescent innocence, given full flight when she unleashes some of the wet stuff on the front rows. Thanks to some cool wigs, she looks exactly like her bro‘ (honestly played by Peterson Townsend). As Olivia, Karen Aldridge gets to show off her ample comedic side after putting up with Lady Macbeth, and Mark L. Montgomery brings an openness and crispness to Orsino."
Chicago Sun Times
- Recommended
"...While Rourke's production is boisterous fun, and the actors admirably withstand their drenchings, the play's darker, more poetic heart gets lost at sea. And all the aquatics eventually seem more gimmicky and distracting than clarifying."
Chicago Reader
- Highly Recommended
"... With the help of a giddy cast, Rourke mostly clears away the dark clouds that hang over Illyria, and though her version's sunny disposition sacrifices some depth (except in Larry Yando's riveting turn as priggish, much-abused Malvolio), it's a nice reminder that the play is, after all, a comedy. As at Sea World, the first row may get wet."
Windy City Times
- Recommended
"...We'd be inclined to cry gimmickry were director Josie Rourke's rendition of Twelfth Night no more than the watery sum of its design team's aquatically engineered parts. But for all its high-tech splashiness, this Twelfth Night is rooted in solid, good-old-fashioned stagecraft. Moreover, the swimming pool isn't just some flashy accessory; it's an organic part of the story."
Chicago Free Press
- Recommended
"...If only because it’s more insistent, the humor outweighs the romance in a production that clearly prefers the comical to the lyrical. Larry Yando’s priggish puritan Malvolio is the perfect party-pooping foil for the burlesque ribaldry of Scott Jaeck’s boorish Sir Toby and Dan Kenney’s doltish Sir Andrew. Ross Lehman as the musical jester Feste dryly delivers laugh after laugh, which is nothing less than this veteran gagster can do in his no doubt hilarious sleep."
Copley News Service
- Highly Recommended
"...Twelfth Night isn’t a profound play but it’s loaded with fun characters entertaining us with their amusing, if improbable, antics. Veteran viewers of the play should enjoy the pool ingredient as an agreeably variation on the standard presentation of the show. First time spectators may wonder how the play can be performed without the pool."
Centerstage
- Highly Recommended
"...Rarely do I like a play so much that I want to go live inside of it. This was, however, the effect of Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s brilliant production of Twelfth Night. Under Josie Rourke's virtuosic direction, the ensemble cast demonstrates that Shakespeare built Illyria, if not on rock 'n roll, on rocking good times."
Time Out Chicago
- Somewhat Recommended
"...Rourke’s production is otherwise almost stridently traditional. The director makes no effort to sex-up the story; nor does the story need it. Viola’s gender-bending masquerade and the numerous romantic mix-ups engendered by it make up one of the Bard’s most pleasant comedies."
ChicagoCritic
- Highly Recommended
"...Twelfth night is a delightful comedy, full of broad humor. Importing Josie Rourke from London's Bush Theatre to work with this seasoned cast provides a powerhouse evening. The audience responded with a well-deserved standing ovation."
Chicago Stage and Screen
- Highly Recommended
"...Director Josie Rourke has created a special production of this play with the assistance of some of Chicago's finest actors. Having Scott Jaeck as the hilarious Sir Toby Belch, Ross Lehman as Feste the Fool, Ora Jones as Maria, Dan Kenny as Sir Andrew and Larry Yando as Malvolio had to make her task easier. Yando can make a reading of the phone directory an event as the only character who doesn't have a happy ending. These are talents that other theaters would kill to have grace their stages."
