"Ms. Coppel’s dialogue is finely honed, her characters drawn with a keen sense of both their forceful drives and inner conflicts. The sharp direction by Lisa Peterson keeps the pacing taut. Where 'King Liz' disappoints is in its sometimes ham-handed plotting."
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"The overstuffed and tonally jumbled play by Fernanda Coppel needs that assist as familiar themes dribble out: racial divides, second chances, women making it in man’s world, having it all, regretting the choice not to be a mom. The world of pro basketball provides a different sort of dramatic arena, but the same old story."
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"Playwright Coppel has latched onto a hot topic in 'King Liz' — the alarming under-representation of female agents in major-league sports...The scribe has also been gifted with a top-notch cast...But the dramaturgy is woefully shaky, with over-the-top characterizations and unforgivable lapses of basic logic."
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"High five to Fernanda Coppel’s 'King Liz,' the swift-moving and hard-dunking tale of a sports agent and her struggle to balance success and her soul. This production, slickly staged by Lisa Peterson and acted by an energetic ensemble, has an unmistakable MVP:the vibrant, charismatic Karen Pittman."
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"Coppel's writing can be razor-sharp, with juicy zingers sprinkled throughout. But Coppel only partially delivers on her promise to bring a new lens to the play's timely topics of race and gender. Much of the play is a comfortable restating of ideas we've heard before within a high-powered work environment, directed by Lisa Peterson with an unsettled balance between realism and exaggerated cliché."
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"The result leans toward soap opera but Coppel's writing is sharp and director Lisa Peterson's muscular production keeps the tension at a high level. As sports-related plays go, this is one of the better ones we've seen in recent seasons."
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"A firmly packed, but never dense, portrait of a woman. But if, at a certain point, Liz's trajectory displays the full arc of its tragic inevitability, the journey to that point and beyond is neither boring nor predictable. Coppel's quick-witted, whip-cracking dialogue, and marvelous direction from Lisa Peterson, ensure that things always unfold on exactly the time frame they should, without sacrificing tension, suspense, or theatricality along the way."
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"If Fernanda Coppel’s writing is somewhat overblown, director Lisa Peterson does nothing to rein it in. Rather, she seems to encourage the definition of characters by a single trait and has her actors hammer that trait into the ground. The cast is competent, but no one really rises above the material."
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