Los Angeles Times - Recommended
"...The staging by Rogue Machine's captain, John Perrin Flynn, is vivid and (notwithstanding the wobbliness of faint Irish accents) anchored in moment-to-moment realism. Stephanie Kerley Schwartz's set makes this improbable setting, complete with a barbecue and drinks table, seem perfectly plausible."
LA Weekly - Recommended
"...Director John Perrin Flynn's exquisitely phantasmagoric staging (featuring Stephanie Kerley Schwartz's masterfully decrepit set and Lauren Tyler's vibrantly imaginative costumes) proves the perfect vehicle for Walsh's poetically charged, comic indictment of the something-for-nothing gene driving humankind's will to self-extermination."
Broadway World - Not Recommended
"...Walsh's script does succeed in renewing the hope of the common man-that someone without any outstanding physical features, youthful vitality, or a modicum of appealing charm might still has a chance of seducing the girl of their dreams. As is, this theatre piece wouldn't thread water in Penelope's pool even if it were filled with water."
Stage and Cinema - Recommended
"...John Perrin Flynn and Brenda Davidson's production of Penelope is so vivid that it's hard for me to imagine the play in any other presentation – even though I've recently seen another that had its own strengths. Flynn's direction is unequivocal, authoritative. He finds the excitement and narrative drive carefully laid underneath Enda Walsh's impossibly literate poetic banter, and he has inspired a company of serious artists to tell the tale with flirtatious gravity."
The Hollywood Reporter - Recommended
"...The tricky and treacherous dialogue here, like Beckett's tramps on meth, requires an alert ear by actors and audience alike. These nimble players, under impressively precise direction by John Perrin Flynn, execute their complex beats with an elaborate and sophisticated sense of rhythm, each individually grandiloquent yet orchestrated for intricate interplay."
LA Splash - Recommended
"...Though rather monologue laden, innuendos and gags abound in this love versus hate dark comedy. All four actors deliver strong performances, and the excellent direction, costuming, stage setting, design, sound, and lighting all deserve special mention. Enda Walsh's Penelope is both gripping and thought provoking as the tension mounts inexorably to a violent conclusion."
StageHappenings.com - Somewhat Recommended
"...Now, in all honesty, S&M generally leaves me at a loss (in all its iterations), so when I say that the plot never coalesced for me and the surreal quality of the writing left me bewildered, you will understand why, but the cast at least made the journey interesting."
Examiner - Recommended
"...The writing, acting, set design are all phenomenal, with an amazing reference to a symbolic presence, whose blood on the wall. is a reminder of the delicate and precarious nature of life and loss."
ArtsInLA - Recommended
"...Director John Perrin Flynn juggles the play's diverse elements with wit and skill, and the actors are splendid."
LifeInLA - Recommended
"...This production successfully holds together Mr. Walsh's rich text, with only minor issues of accents being dropped and actors having too little breath to deliver lengthy monologues. This is a difficult piece because it grapples with big ideas and asks audiences to suspend their disbelief. It brings on the surrealism as it asks us to ponder the mutability of life and love, and then brings realism in the form of violence. Grounded in mythology, which sought to disperse truth in a grand landscape, this play wants to discover truth even though truth may be nothing more than our delusions. Maybe that is exactly what art is. Mr. Walsh, then, is an artist and has, as a character in the play says, "like all great artists, found truth in his delusion.""
The Los Angeles Post - Recommended
"...This is a MUST SEE; I loved it."
Cultural Weekly - Recommended
"...I can recommend Penelope chiefly to people who enjoy the adventure of doing the work that such an extravagant and complicated play demands - and who, after all the tongue-in-cheek wit, can take the violent twists of its conclusion. This play is not what you'd call a picnic, but it is engrossing and it is playing in the right theatre."
