The Dance of Death Reviews
Los Angeles Times- Somewhat Recommended
"...The problem with his acting - and this pertains also to Angelo's - is that it strives for a relaxed naturalness that often seems artificial. Instead of rising to meet Strindberg's tragi-comic style, he opts to make his character appealingly relatable for contemporary theatergoers. Johnson is more successful at locating the playwright's bracingly mercurial tone. But the world of the play - a cutoff artistic universe all its own - never feels fully authentic."
LA Weekly- Recommended
"...Johnson's straight-man transit from vulnerability to full psychic fracture proves an effective springboard for Angelo and Elliott to reach the play's grim register of mordant comedy. With a more rigorously anchored staging, directors Geoff Elliott and Julia Rodriguez-Elliott might also have sharpened those laughs with a keener edge of Strindbergian despair."
StageHappenings.com- Recommended
"...Co-artistic directors Geoff and Julia Rodriguez-Elliott join in creating a taut production that continually surprises, always keeping an audience off-balance while subtly moving this dance forward through shifting sands of blame and revelation. The apex of power between a torturous married couple played by Geoff Elliott and Susan Angelo shifts with each new revelation."
Cultural Weekly- Recommended
"...Strindbeg puts in rare appearances on modern stages, probably because the extant translations of his plays are a bit musty and the plays, like the climate of his native Sweden, are angry and unforgiving. But the choice by ANW of The Dance of Death, in a more naturalistic and more recent translation by Conor McPherson, is a surprisingly good one. It is staged here by ANW Artistic Co-Directors Geoff Elliott and Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, and does not so much soften this scorched earth battle of the sexes as punch up the humor in the ferocity of the relationship. (Isn't all marital Punch & Judy ultimately laughable?)"