The Drowning Girls

*2016 NON-EQUITY JEFF AWARDS

BEST ENSEMBLE NOMINATION*

★★★½ - "The beauty of this play comes from the wonderful use of comedy to emphasize the absurdity of their situations. All three women provide stellar performances. Reardon, Schwartz, and Smith seamlessly and effortlessly move between their characters and playing the parts of family members and the husband in each others retellings of events. All three have a nose for dark comedy and their chemistry is unmatched. But it’s their ability to take that comedy and drown it in emotional pain and turmoil that really elevates the performances. With their clothes soaked through from the bathtub water, every moment of comedy literally drips with the reminder of their deaths...The Drowning Girls delivers a fun yet deeply emotional performance." -- Chicago Stage Standard

"lyrical, disturbing, and tantalizingly indecipherable." -- Chicago Reader

★★★ - "It's a morbidly funny and sometimes wistful trip through the minds of women who paid the ultimate price for trusting the wrong man... Schwartz's shy Bessie, Reardon's willful Alice and Smith's aching Margaret leave a palpable impression as we watch their lives and dreams swirl away." -- Chicago Tribune

"a beautifully performed, balletic story...."...Director Melanie Keller does a masterful job of choreographing the three wives, who are played with perfect timing, subtle gestures and accents as they change characters." -- Gapers Block

"There should be a special Joseph Jefferson Award for actors performing an entire play while sopping wet." -- Gapers Block

"This is theatrical collaboration at its finest. The actors, writers, director, designers create an imaginative and evocative memory. The show is unforgettable." -- The Fourth Walsh

"Highly Recommended - Haunting, Beautiful, Tragic - This [well acted and designed eighty minute show...full of lovely details and superb acting] is one of those gems that should not be missed... Katherine Schwartz as Bessie, earnestly portrays her yearning for a man she barely knows. It will break your heart. Her timing and honest portrayal of a woman of her time are outstanding.

-- Chicago Theatre Review

Fault Lines

"Rachel (Katherine Schwartz) is the final piece of the triad. Schwartz is beautifully expressive and gives a golden performance as the survivor who makes a career out of saving other children. Schwartz’ eyes give silent dialogue to Rachel’s inner pain."

~ Kat Hey, Chicago Theatre Beat

"...Miller’s script, Dennis Frymire’s direction and the three beautiful performances from these actresses all avoid the obvious pratfall of exploitation. The show is a thoughtful, moving meditation on loss, horror, and the different ways good people find to cope."

~ Rory Leahy, Centerstage Chicago

Zoyka's Apartment

"Schwartz is perfection in the title role: a true grande dame all too aware that her star is fading, but who will fight like hell to keep it in the sky just a little longer."

~Scotty Zacher, Chicago Theatre Beat

In Pigeon House

"Katherine Schwartz easily lights up the stage as Dolly, and is equally convincing as both a pert dairy manager and practiced vixen. (Her dramatic piece about cows slaughtered in a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak is a gem.)"

~Heidi Weiss, Chicago Sun Times

"The cast is a marvel of physicality, vocal skill, and performance, delivering each scene with a sensibility for its genre. As Dolly, Katherine Schwartz gives a very funny exaggerated performance as a dairy wife arguing with her husband... later, she gives a wrenching monologue on the devastation wrought by foot-in-mouth to her family’s generations-old farm."

~Joy Campbell, Chicago Theatre Beat

The Gray Girl

"The female ensemble of the show are charming, conveying the style of 1950’s with ease. Katherine Schwartz offers a quite chilling performance as the ghost of Lana."

~Danielle Stack, Chicago Theatre Beat

"Dying understandably pisses the young woman off, and so her ghost (played by Katherine Schwartz, with relish) wreaks havoc. "It doesn't take training to throw a punch," [Schwartz] says in a flashback, channeling Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not. "You just curl your fingers and move fast."

~Zac Thompson, Time Out Chicago

The Somewhat Gelatinous Blob from Beyond the Grave

(and also the Grave is in Outer Space)

"...It [is] deliriously funny...Schwartz is just about perfect: she plays the scenes straight enough to let the absurdity of the script shine through."

~Zac Valancy, On Chicago Theatre