"Succeeds at creating smart, lightly absurdist humor, but misses the mark in its attempt at a revisionist redemption. It doesn’t help that the play is mostly dedicated to its two male characters...We know Shakespeare’s behavior is sexist, so why didn’t Monahon address her critiques directly to the men onstage, in true, anachronistic fashion? Not all is lost, however. Monahon is clearly a gifted comedy writer, and a sweet stage presence, too."
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"Monahon has written deft plays before, including her clever comedy 'How to Load a Musket,' and she flourishes here, her writing fleet and crisp and silly by turns...Spahn does the trickiest lifting comedy-wise, both bearing up under Monahon’s few wrong-footed moments (a 'Who’s on First?'–style routine about his character’s last name) and getting the biggest laugh of the night with some audience work. And Urie is, as always, a triumph."
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"This lively, demented 'revenge comedy' riffs with bawdy irreverence on several roughly contemporaneous events in London...All in all, it’s a blast, and a gleeful refutation of the idea that feminists aren’t funny."
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"Unfortunately, the play, directed unevenly by Jess Chayes, feels unpolished. As timely and amusing as Monahon's ideas are, the play's humor is largely hit-or-miss, with as many chuckles as groaners and a main character who lacks the prominence she should. For his part, Michael Urie plays Monahon's Shakespeare, an oversexed whiner, with petulant glee...Whatever your feelings about the Bard, Monahon's pleasingly nerdy quips and gibes about Shakespeare's life, works, and the times in which he lived make for good comedy."
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"A well-acted if uneven mix of lowbrow comedy and highbrow ideas...During the play's last section, when the two women are alone on stage, the conversation takes a more serious turn...It makes for a striking change in the overall play, which up to this point has been performed as if it were trying to be a farce under Jess Chayes's flighty direction. The payoff is strong, but it comes at the price of sitting through a lot of untoward jokiness of the classroom clown and frat-boy variety."
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Puns, witty repartee, double entendres, verbal wordplay out of Abbott and Costello, sight gags and slapstick all abound in playwright Talene Monahon's zany, edgy and accomplished historical comedy, JANE ANGER or The Lamentable Comedie of JANE ANGER, that Cunning Woman, and also of Willy Shakefpeare and his Peasant Companion, Francis, Yes and Also of Anne Hathaway (also a Woman) Who Tried Very Hard. During a breezy 90 minutes, four offbeat characters cavort in a room; laughter is plentiful.
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"Compounding fact, fiction, and farce, Monhon stirs a compelling one-act. Urie is at the top of his game, presenting Shakespeare as an almost fatuous influencer. Spahn is wonderfully adroit with his pandering servant, playing directly in the audience at times. Under the direction of Jess Chayes, the production is lively and fully entertaining. The exceptional cast adroitly delivering Monahon’s timely ripostes with zest and intelligence."
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"In addition to a gift for anachronistic intellectual humor, Monahon exhibits a talent for bawdry. Shakespeare needs sexual stimulation, and his best work has been done during relationships with two lovers known from the sonnets...Monahon’s knowledge of Elizabethan and Jacobean literature is deep...but ultimately the play is an entertainment for theater aficionados...As the drama shifts to earnestness and women’s rights in the late scenes, it becomes tonally jarring and gruesome, albeit in a Monty Python–esque way."
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