Steve On Broadway (SOB)

Sonia Flew Doesn't Quite Soar With Chicago Critics

Sonia Flew Doesn’t Quite Soar With Chicago Critics

Last evening, Melinda Lopez’s Sonia Flew opened at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre. The reviews by Chicago’s newspaper critics provided a mixed assessment of the show.

Calling the play “an ambitious effort, though a not entirely successful one,” Chicago Sun-Times’ Hedy Weiss recommends the production: “The Steppenwolf cast -- in some impressively deft dual role-playing -- turns in first-rate performances under the smooth direction of Jessica Thebus….The first act dialogue between the supposedly loving, long-married husband and wife suggests they'd never discussed this traumatic event before, and it feels like nothing but an awkward dramatic contrivance. Yet much of the rest of the play is redeemed by Lopez's sensitive writing and well-earned emotional fever.”

Criticizing the drama as “overwrought,” Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune doesn't think the first act measures up to the second: “The dialog is stilted and far too pat…And there's such a staged, artificial quality to Jessica Thebus' strangely cast production that you initially find yourself believing little. But Sonia Flew merits some patience. Its story really begins in the second act...Young Sonia is written with feeling and understanding, and it's performed as such. But there's clutter in her way….[T]he end of the play is also too neat.”

Shortly, I’ll be posting my own critique of Sonia Flew.

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Sonia Flew Takes Wing Tonight In Chicago (December 11, 2006)

Labels: Chicago, Critics' Capsule, Play, Sonia Flew, Steppenwolf

posted by Steve On Broadway (SOB) @ Monday, December 11, 2006