“A blistering beauty of a play that rages with regret and pitch-black humor...A poetic drama with a peculiar, tricky shape...The production can’t find its tone...Straining for laughs, it undermines the humanity that Carr’s comedy needs to stand on...It piles on obtrusive design elements that overwhelm the intimate space...Haberle’s performance never feels convincingly like a deathbed...Gut-punch insights don’t get much space to land in this impatient, unbalanced production."
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"Death is rarely easy or pleasant, and neither is Marina Carr's chamber play about the process of dying and what that might reveal about how we should live...The performances are committed, and the design is wonderfully eerie...But even if most of the action is a morphine-fueled deathbed dream, Haberle seems too robust to be on the verge of shuffling off this mortal coil, and her desperate griping grows repetitive in director Ciarán O'Reilly's static staging."
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"Directed with the right amount of etherealness...The play itself is nonlinear, and O'Reilly's physical production gives off a similar vibe...Only Haberle's performance feels tonally out of sync, pulsing with energy that feels too excessive...This vitality is strangely jarring, and throws off the momentum of the piece as a whole...Bogged down by symbolism, overly poetic, and circular in its arguments, this is a relentlessly depressing play in desperate need of both an editor and some levity."
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"Callous as it may seem, after a while one begins to wonder if she really will manage to shuffle off this mortal coil, so many grievances has she to share...Admittedly, for a good chunk of its running time, 'Woman and Scarecrow' coasts on its lively, rancorous exchanges...But, as it gradually sinks in that there will be no real conflict or meaningful dramatic action -- just more railing at the injustice of the universe -- a certain tedium sets in."
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"Unfortunately, O'Reilly's heavy reliance on the production team is also indicative of a significant problem: the play is repetitive. Despite finding new, and often lovely, poetic ways to convey the centrality of death to life, Carr's thoughts and arguments quickly begin to sound like the same melody over and over again, just in a different key. O'Reilly tries to distract us from this fault by giving the Gottlieb-Rumery-Corcoran trio creative free rein."
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"An up-close and personal look at a deeply-flawed woman in her final hours of life...The play does have its share of black humor and high spirits. Woman, in fact, has more vim and vigor than your typical person in the pink of health...An ambitious play. It is brimming with references to popular culture, literature, and mythology...That said, it doesn't totally succeed as a drama. But it surely will remind you that nobody escapes death."
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"O’Reilly has delivered a top-drawer production, coaxing the best out of a difficult play, with a roster of remarkable actors who have plunged into their roles head-on with fierce commitment and splendid, award-worthy performances across the board...Carr is, if nothing else, immensely literate and observant of the human condition. At the same time, much of the philosophizing is banal, only elevated to soaring heights by Carr’s skill as a playwright and wordsmith."
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“Exquisite, sublime, smart, and damn funny. Woman, played by the incomparable Haberle, and Scarecrow by the brilliantly talented and funny Gray, are pugilists with their words, sparing off and punching out. This is one hell of a good play with an ensemble that takes your breath away, makes you think, and touches your heart...An event to be witnessed...Take a friend so that you can...discuss what you have experienced and what it all means to that thing you call your life.”
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