Gather: Surprising Stories and Other Mischief Reviews
Los Angeles Times- Recommended
"..."Gather: Surprising Stories & Other Mischief," now at the Carrie Hamilton Theatre, the second-floor space at Pasadena Playhouse, is a lively and overdue homage to "Paul Sills' Story Theatre," the 1970 show based on Grimm and Aesop. "Gather" co-creators John C. Reilly and Patrick Murphy (who also directs) sample freely from a variety of eclectic fairy and folk sources, including a sanguinary take on the Bluebeard tale and a comical yarn from rural West Virginia. Plenty of toe-tapping music is interspersed throughout the comedy and gore. (Parents with young kids, take heart: Family-friendly Sunday matinees lighten up on the butchery and double down on the whimsy.)"
Stage Raw- Somewhat Recommended
"...There's not a specific plot or through-line to Gather; rather, it's a collection of short stories, evocative of fairy tales, fables, and short literary fiction like you might find in the New Yorker, all created by John C. Reilly and Patrick Murphy (no writer is credited). Some of the stories are light and simple, but as the show progresses, the themes get darker - eternal life and death, betrayal, vindictiveness, and dismemberment start to figure into the narratives. The stories don't all fit into one category, as too many lack either a sense of lightness that comes with fairy tales, or a moral, as one would expect from a fable."