Tom Williams ChicagoCritic.com May 10, 2006
" I liked Tom Gordon’s take on Eben, the son who struggles with lust and conviction as he attempts to capture the farm away from his hated father."
" . . . real Eugene O’Neill fans will find this work engaging . . . "
TimeOut Chicago
NIGHTMARE ON ELMS STREET Kuhlmann and Gordon get to the dark heart of O’Neill.
Who knew that O’Neill’s rarely produced tragedy—written in 1924, set in 1850, and drawing on classics like Phèdre and Hippolytus (with a healthy dose of Freud’s version of Oedipus Rex)—could feel so contemporary? GreyZelda’s minimalist storefront treatment draws a direct line from O’Neill to more modern works like Shepard’s Buried Child and Romulus Linney’s dark Appalachian plays. O’Neill’s influence on said latter playwrights is clear in Riter’s bare-bones and basement-budget staging of the love affair between Eben (Gordon) and Abbie (Kuhlmann), doomed not least because Abbie’s the new wife of Eben’s hard-hearted religious tyrant father, Ephraim (Tompoulis), who’s built walls between himself and his son as impermeable as the stone walls surrounding his farm.
The leads in this romantic tragedy are both terrific, especially Kuhlmann, who can be simultaneously coldly determined and confused with passion. She maintains this multiplicity of emotion until Abbie’s climactic breakdown, when she goes blank and weary, as though she’s run out of feelings. The character of Ephraim feels more kinship with his stony land, his livestock, and his idea of God than with his human family, but Riter allows Tompoulis too much free rein; he makes Ephraim a cartoonish, sneering ape, and sinks so deep into O’Neill’s cotton-mouthed dialect as to be unintelligible. Still, Riter’s physical, fast-paced staging makes things fresh, and scenic designer Heath Hays gets extra credit for evoking the vastly oppressive New England farmland without the benefit of stones, walls or indeed those onerous elms.—Kris Vire
Chicago Reader
A domineering father, his calculating young bride, a resentful son, and a valuable estate create a situation ripe for uncontrolled greed and passion in Eugene O'Neill's 1924 shocker. Today the story risks coming off as hackneyed to audiences inured to steamy domestic intrigues. But under Chris Riter's perceptive direction, the GreyZelda Theatre Group uses its intimate storefront space to advantage, establishing the intensity of the characters' relationships. In a production running a tidy two hours with not a second wasted, Tom Gordon and Melissa J. Kuhlmann are suitably eros obsessed as the young lovers. But what rivets our attention is Aris Tompulis's bearish performance as the uncompromising patriarch. --Mary Shen Barnidge
Steadstyle Chicago
Melissa Kuhlmann electrifies . . . Even in an unseasonably chilly May, Kuhlmann makes us feel the steam and perspiration of a stifling hot summer, and just as her character Abbie stakes her ground on the Cabot family farm, so does this superb actress make O'Neill's saga of forbidden desire her own.
O'Neill borrowed the Oedipal legend from the Ancient Greeks, while keeping his play firmly rooted in early 20th Century rural Americana. Crotchety old patriarch Ephraim Cabot has just taken his third wife, a young woman named Abbie, who is anxious to take over the family farm and make a new home and life for herself. She will have quite a fight on her hands, though, with Ephraim's youngest son, Eben, who believes the property belonged to his late mother and that he is its rightful beneficiary.
To stake his claim, Eben pays off his elder half brothers Peter and Simeon, who plan to strike it rich in the California Gold Rush. And while Abbie and Eben grapple over ownership rights to the family homestead, the inevitable sparks begin to fly and the tragic wheels of lust and fate begin to turn. And what of old Ephraim? Will he just roll over for the young 'uns without a good fight? Don't bet on it.
While the play is ostensibly set in O'Neill's New England, Director Chris Riter's staging seems rooted in West Virginia. Tom Gordon's earnest and folksy manner is credible . . . But it is Kuhlmann who walks away with the acting honors in an earthy, ripe and sensuous performance that is fully committed and riveting. There are moments in this small black box staging that are stirring and powerful . . .Kuhlmann's work is unforgettable.
Chicago Tribune
" . . . the actors find the wounded dignity that girds O'Neill's potboiler of a story, thanks mostly to Melissa Kuhlmann's quietly mesmerizing Abbie and to Aris Tompulis' ability to imbue Ephraim--her flinty old coot of a husband--with the wounded solitary pride that is the undoing of his troubled clan." - Kerri Reid