Stage and Cinema
- Highly Recommended
"...Mark Mendelson's tightly composed set at The Matrix Theatre is a room cloaked in aging wealth at the Keating family's Philadelphia home. Heavy curtains. Soft chairs. Whiskey always within reach. It feels like it once held power and still holds its consequences. That atmosphere is no accident-it's a haunt of choices made long ago and still echoing. John Fazakerley's moody companion to Corktown '57, Corktown '39-now being presented by Rogue Machine-draws on a little-remembered 1939 plot to assassinate King George VI, but Fazakerley isn't chasing headlines. He is after what festers when loyalty outlives clarity. This is not a play about action. It's about inertia that pretends to be purpose."
LA Splash
- Highly Recommended
"...Brilliantly helmed by Steven Robman, CORKTOWN'39 will have the audience sitting on the edge of their chairs as the tale based on real-life incidents unfolds. Aided by talented and experienced actors who know their business and understand their characters, CORKTOWN '39 slowly envelops the Keating family, ardent fighters for Irish independence, while a burgeoning romance also develops to heighten the tension building in all quarters."
Stage Scene LA
- Highly Recommended
"...Tensions reach a breaking point when an Irish-American family finds itself knee-deep in an assassination plot in John Fazakerley's slow-boiling thriller Corktown '39, another sensational Rogue Machine Theatre Company World Premiere."
Angeles Stage
- Recommended
"...Steven Robman's riveting staging of "Corktown '39" for Rogue Machine creates, well, a corker (as in "an excellent or astonishing person or thing"). It's scheduled to play through May 25. The actors (also including Tommy McCabe, Thomas Vincent Kelly and Peter Van Norden) comprise one of the best ensembles seen in LA recently. And the idea of raising the alarm about collaboration with future F'hrers is an important ingredient of the play's unexpected relevance. I didn't see a production of Fazakerley's "Corktown '57" a decade ago at the Odyssey Theatre, but now I regret it."
ArtsBeatLA
- Highly Recommended
"...This may be surprising to some, but I am not an expert on Irish WW2 history. I was aware that Ireland had a policy of neutrality during the war, but according to playwright John Fazakerly, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) were in talks to receive support from Germany. More than that, they had plenty of support in the United States, and the machinations of that fundraising effort provides the drama of his new play, Corktown '39, which is currently receiving a compelling and first-rate production at Rogue Machine."
On Stage Los Angeles
- Highly Recommended
"...World Premiere of John Fazakerley's "Corktown '39" .. based on actual events and real people.. , dredges up deep feelings for the Irish: undeniable passions and politics that .. though not exactly paralell to today's current threat to the United States, the issues of Ireland and Self Rule and how to get there .. to get from beneath the Jack- boot of British rule,, bubbles like a cauldron of Mutton Stew!"
Stage Raw
- Recommended
"...John Fazakerley's fact-based Corktown '39 - a sequel to his earlier play Corktown '57, staged at the Odyssey a few years back - is part family drama, part political thriller, and a wholly engrossing, well-researched window into a little-known event in recent Irish history: the Irish Republican Army's 1939 plot to assassinate England's king, George VI, during a visit to America."
Ticket Holders LA
- Highly Recommended
"...Corktown '39 goes directly to the top of my list as one of the most fascinating, gripping, and well-produced plays that has come along in quite a spell. It's a thrilling throwback to the topical political dramas of the 1930s and 1940s, reminiscent of works by American playwrights Eugene O'Neill and Clifford Odets and Irish writers such as Sean O'Casey, Brendan Behan, and John Millington Synge. Even more fascinating, Corktown '39 is based on historical fact and most of the characters were actual people."
Mostly Shakespeare
- Highly Recommended
"...The Rogue Machine Theatre (located within the Matrix Theatre) is currently hosting the world premiere of Corktown '39, a powerful and often funny play that centers on a family of Irish immigrants and their involvement in the struggle for an independent Ireland. It takes place in an Irish section of Philadelphia in the days just before World War II, a time that has been on the minds of many people in this country lately, as certain parallels are too striking and frightening to ignore (those parallels were not lost on the audience at Sunday's performance)."
Broadway World
- Highly Recommended
"...Corktown '39 is an exhilerating, must-see new world premiere play at Rogue Machine on Melrose through May 25th. Corktown '39 is a new play that feels like a classic, the kind of intelligent, thought-provoking drama that you can imagine a playwright like Aaron Sorkin or Henrik Ibsen might have written."
