Broadway World - Highly Recommended
"...As both a self-producing venue and a rental venue , the Matrix Theatre has brought a lot of spectacular worlds to life during its mighty history. The space's configuration for THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE, fashioned by production designer David Mauer and the technical team, is superb. Cienfuegos stages the action essentially in the round, surrounding the actors with audience members who can even sit on their bean bags and sofas if they so choose. Point taken: these kids are in our faces, and we are in theirs. Whether that makes us, the older and hopefully wiser generation in any way complicit with what we're seeing is up for discussion, and Rogue Machine has smartly scheduled several talk-backs as part of its Difficult Conversation series during the run of the production."
LA Splash - Highly Recommended
"...The Rogue Machine has done it again! Their current production of THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE is gripping, fascinating, intriguing, and controversial - all at the same time. Based on playwright Tim Venable's personal reactions and experiences emanating from the 1999 Columbine school shooting - as well as thorough research - THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE investigates the multiple dynamics which may have led to the mass shooting, assembling intense and realistic profiles of two teen school shooters - tragic events that Americans are now being forced to deal with on an almost weekly basis. Skillfully helmed by director Guillermo Cienfuegos, THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE painstakingly builds tension during the hours before until it explodes into action."
Stage Scene LA - Highly Recommended
"...Tim Venable’s hot-button-issue World Premiere two-hander The Beautiful People will have you thinking and talking about the gut-punching latest from Rogue Machine long after the stage has gone dark at Melrose’s Matrix Theatre."
ArtsBeatLA - Recommended
"...Director Guillermo Cienfuegos gets strong performances from his actors and effectively stages the show in the round, in which the audience is seated all over the basement set (detailed production design credited to David Mauer). There's one terrific moment in which the actors tell a couple of audience members to leave their seats that nicely obliterates the fourth wall. Christopher Moscatiello's sound design is marvelous, convincing us that we're actually in a basement room, with footsteps and noises all creating an effective illusion."
On Stage Los Angeles - Highly Recommended
"...Artistic Director John Perrin Flynn and the Rogue Machine Theatre are still working to make The Matrix Theatre a destination for new ideas. The BeAutiful People is an important World Premiere. Sticky with socially challenging subject matter, we are reminded that Theatre can change the world. We come in and sit down and when we leave, what matters may stick with us. This one sticks."
Total Theater - Highly Recommended
"...The Beautiful People is an ironic title for a play about two ugly, dumb, dangerous teenagers. They are the only characters in Tim Venable's powerful drama which is now in a world-premiere run at Rogue Machine, directed by Guillermo Cienfuegos."
Stage Raw - Somewhat Recommended
"...At the conclusion of this play by Tim Venable, we realize that here is a very timely work; the play crawls inside the violent mindset of disaffected youth, the kind of incel teens often responsible for mass shootings. Until its conclusion, although the performances and direction are first-rate, one wonders why we are watching two young men horsing around and speaking in a raunchy vernacular. Many audiences may find it illuminating to spend more than an hour observing such interplay, which they might view as extreme. But for this critic the interaction seemed fairly characteristic of many teenage youths who don’t progress to the point reached at the end of this drama, and there was not enough humor, titillation or sense of suspense to keep me engaged until the play’s climax. At that point, the story could well bring to mind events such as those at Columbine or Uvalde."
Peoples World - Recommended
"...More than a play about Columbine, The Beautiful People is about how a strong, aggressive person can mesmerize others (millions, in some cases) by manipulating their fears and anxieties. In that sense, though the play unfolds in less than an hour and a half, it probably is best understood as the evolution of a toxic relationship between subject and object over the course of months or even years. What we see on stage is but the culmination of a set of patterns and expectancies that are now deeply embedded in these two characters. Any comparison to powerful male political figures who manage to hypnotize hordes of fanatical followers by the attraction to their aura is fully intended."
Ticket Holders LA - Highly Recommended
"...Venable's fast-moving intermissionless 80-minute one-act, snapped into eerie corporeality under the skillful direction of Guillermo Ciegfuegos, is startlingly, horrifyingly true to life, providing a not often seen glimpse of how too many of our children have been raised in the toxic environment of contemporary American life."
Larchmont Buzz - Highly Recommended
"...Twenty-four hours after seeing The Beautiful People, I still feel traumatized. The trigger warning in the Matrix Theatre lobby about nudity, violence and gunplay did little to forestall discomfort at watching—there’s no other way to say it—toxic masculinity play out onstage."
Glamgical - Highly Recommended
"...The Beautiful People is a pungent and radical play that will get you out of your comfort zone and place you in the character's world. A world where survival of the fittest is the only way. The topics presented might make the skin crawl, but the play offers an opportunity to start a conversation that could prevent a tragedy that might be around the corner."
