Citizen: An American Lyric Reviews
LA Weekly- Somewhat Recommended
"...One wishes that Sachs had resisted the impulse to diminish the gemlike integrity of Rankine's poems by needlessly breaking them into separate voices. The resulting chronicle of black anger and white uneasiness at times seems more like a sermon than something that dramatically engages. But Citizen is nevertheless a potent and profoundly unsettling ride."
Talkin Broadway- Recommended
"...Citizen is good theatre. It's solidly in the Fountain's wheelhouse-an ensemble piece that floats between dream and reality, narration and performance, and challenges its audience's perceptions about a potentially incendiary topic The actors are strong and effectiveand the tech elementsadd to the experience."
Broadway World- Recommended
"...Under the late Sherry Netherland's fine pacing and tight staging. the two actors deliver utterly engaging performances. Pedersen and Sykes are both at home with high drama and dig deep to find every color, every shade, every nuance to express the angst, bitterness and sheer hopelessness of living. Bravo!"
ArtsInLA- Recommended
"...Once again, Sachs and his intrepid cohorts have proven themselves to be a vital, urgently significant voice in the battle for our humanity with Sachs's provocative new adaptation of Claudia Rankine's international bestselling book of confrontational poetry, here customized into a startlingly creative and highly theatrical meditation on the inequities of race relations in America."
KCRW- Recommended
"...The Fountain Theatre has adapted Claudia Rankine's epic prose poem Citizen: An American Lyric for the stage and the result is problematic, powerful, and inescapably essential."
Theatre Spoken Here- Recommended
"...Shirley Jo Finney's direction ignites the performers - Bernard K. Addison, Leith Burke, Tina Lifford, Tony Maggio, Simone Missick, Lisa Pescia - who play myriad parts with energy and passion."