Press

A Sampling of Critical Response to Our Work

[They] succeed so well it seems effortless. […] Above all, it is alive. […] I hope future productions [of Chekhov] in town take the hint.

– Omar Willey, The Seattle Star | Uncle Vanya

 

Brilliant new translation by Zhenya Lavy. […] This version of Uncle Vanya was not another fossil in a museum, but a vibrant play propelled by psychic movement. […] The Music was to die for! […] All in all this is the best production of Chekhov I have ever seen.

– Marie Bonfils, Drama in the Hood | Uncle Vanya

 

Akropolis displays an excellence that blurs genre lines. […] all is laid out with vocal and physical exactitude. […] a seriously satisfying performance.

– Leah B. Green, Seattle Times | Oedipus

 

This powerful and fully realized production of Seneca’s “Oedipus” […] achieves depth and transcendence, literary clarity and theatrical invention, striking immediacy and timeless consequence. […] The production is filled with imagination and confident expression, all predicated on the power of theatrical immediacy, the confluence of audience and actor in the moment of live performance. The company is talented, balanced, disciplined and passionate, the artistry mature and substantial. […] I thought this production was thrilling, admirable and utterly engaging. There was nothing stuffy or pedantic about this ancient classic, and the combination of a beautiful translation of a truly great story with inventive, committed performers made this one of the best shows I’ve seen in months.

– Jerry Kraft, SeattleActor.com | Oedipus

 

The three-person ensemble is impressively disciplined. They throw themselves and one another about with the stoical (one might even say masochistic) grace associated with students of the Polish theatrical innovator Jerzy Grotowski. […] Musical interludes devised by Jennifer Lavy are admirable. […] The crunched harmonies and the singers’ vocal assurance are amazing.

– Joe Adcock, Seattle P-I | Dream of a Ridiculous Man

 

The presentation is rich and layered. […] so simple and yet after the show I kept wondering, how did they DO that? Where did that come from? It’s like abstract visual art—you understand it at gut level and can’t identify the individual elements that make it so successful. It must be a terrific experience to create that kind of magic. I look forward to seeing the next piece from Akropolis.

– Becky Hellyer, president of Seattle Dramatists | Dream of a Ridiculous Man

 

The actors run, sing, dance, collide, intertwine, contort, flagellate, and even hang themselves in a sort of balletic mimicry of psychological disintegration. […] Their courage, as well as their talent, is admirable.

– Richard Morin, Seattle Weekly | Dream of a Ridiculous Man

 

 The work is indescribably complex, in story-telling, physicality, and musicality. […] Not something I would have wanted to miss. […] Theater unlike anything else you will see around Seattle.

– Joe Boling | Dream of a Ridiculous Man
(Boling placed Dream in his top 10% of 309 shows viewed in 2004)

 

Interspersed are marvelous songs. . . sung without accompaniment. The four-part harmonies are uniquely unsettling and thrilling, saturated with devotion and longing. . . . music director Jennifer Lavy achieves a kind of perfection.

– Joe Adcock, Seattle P-I | Song of Songs

 

Intensely physical . . . They truly use their bodies to express the darkness consuming their hearts. . . I wasn’t ready for it to end.

– Jason Rogers, Seattle Fringe Theatre Festival reviewer | Macbeth

 

The beauty of the music and the imagery achieved by the players are worth seeing even if you don’t know the story. They are stunning.

– Joe Boling | Macbeth