“A shabby apartment building becomes a cabinet of wonders in Ex Machina’s glittering ‘887’…The show’s beginning is seductive, brazen…The play has its excessively tangential moments and some indulgent ones, too…Its best moments share a childlike simplicity…There are many technological marvels but they’re humanely scaled and rarely deployed for their own sake. Raw emotional force builds from the accretion of slight moments of remembrance and discovery.”
Read more

“In the heart-stoppingly gorgeous ‘887,’ the auteur is deft and perfect again, meshing reminiscence and images together with a watchmaker's care…The gentle memory show combusts into a political cri de coeur. Details from earlier in the play explode like timed charges…You leave, at least partially knowing how he felt. A day later, I can still feel the show smoldering its way through my synapses—searing its way into being unforgettable.”
Read more

“An intensely personal revisiting of his childhood in Quebec...If '887’ is essentially the story of a memory exercise, it is all the more authentic as the presentation of life as it is lived, without much time to connect the dots. What makes the show memorable is its artistry. ‘887’ is theater on a grand scale...It is storytelling as great performance, with Lepage moving seamlessly through childhood and adulthood...Proof again of Lepage’s unparalleled powers of observation and creative genius."
Read more

"There’s a theme bubbling beneath the surface about class and opportunity, and the suggestion that the great movements of history were determined by injustice and inequality. Lepage continues to develop his work beyond opening night and he may yet find more mileage in the story of his grandmother, whose memory loss chimes with the themes of '887' but doesn’t fully connect. That, though, is a minor niggle in a work that delights, mesmerizes and provokes."
Read more

"Lepage proves he needs to consistently push the boundaries and nowhere is that more evident than in his technical wizardry...Lepage is an artist who is constantly striving for intellectual inquiry and he adds new layers to the piece by questioning the act of remembering itself...The foundations of the show, then, are simple, personal; the ramifications complex, far-reaching. The tone is wistful but not without insouciant wit and self-irony."
Read more

"'887' glides smoothly through time and place, artfully constructing a cloud of associations as it goes...Lepage never ties everything together, preferring that cloud to anything more concrete...Even if you don't come away with fresh understanding of history and memory, it's a beguiling show, full of ultra-pleasing theatricality...Only afterwards do you realise how little it leaves behind, as ephemeral as a memory. But then, maybe, that's the point."
Read more

"A deeply autobiographical examination of memory and belonging...Lepage’s father — a taxi driver working all hours to provide for his wife, four children and an aging mother — is the hero of the piece, while Lepage accounts himself honestly as sometimes brittle and egotistical, with several jokes at his own expense. There are slightly awkward 'conversations' with invisible characters on stage, but two hours, with no interval, of often ingenious storytelling never pales."
Read more

"How to remember? He tries an ancient method – the memory palace: think of a place you know well, assign to areas within it those things you want to recall. This subtly develops into an exploration of what makes a life worthwhile, a society worth living in...Lepage dazzlingly creates shifting perspectives to conjure his unique private-public memoryscape...This unostentatious, meticulously crafted two-hour performance is touching, intimate, powerful."
Read more