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LASCIVIOUS SOMETHING
"Callaghan, whose previous work might be described as post-feminist punk
incursions into the poetic turf of early Sam Shepard, here employs a
more linear narrative line to push her personal-is-political agenda... But
the real fireworks are in the two women's predatory tug o' war that
plays like a Western showdown." -LA Weekly
"Sheila Callaghan has created a great premise and fascinating characters,
her writing intertwining wine and blood and sex as painful but necessary
life forces... real fireworks... incisive language." -Backstage (critic's pick)
"Sheila Callaghan's Lascivious Something, presented by Circle X,
achieves its mythic ambitions to a surprising degree... It's as if the
beating sun and all the booze consumed were making our heads spin as
well as the characters." -Variety
"Callaghan has a keen sense of language as an act of aggression...
compelling." -LA Times
"Sheila Callaghan shares all the characteristics of the Irish writers we
view with shuddering awe: Conor Macpherson, Martin McDonagh, Martina
Carr. Vivid language, panting eroticism, and a quarrelsome sense of the
universe." -Curtain Up
"Lascivious Something exudes a haunting exoticism bordering on the
magical." -LAist
"Sheila Callaghan's sensually provocative new play, like a fine wine must
be inhaled, swished about upon reflection and savored slowly to enjoy
all the richness in this full-bodied dramedy.... this is a brave, new work
by an exciting writer and a show that should not be missed unless you're
a priggish teetotaler or have a heart condition." --eyespyla
"This sultry, seething, sometimes seedy production is never quite what
you would expect... Sometimes dreamlike, often shocking, Lascivious
Something is at once both fraught and languorous, its most powerful
moments found in the quietest revelations or silent stares." -The
Collective Magazine
"A beautifully tragic play written by Sheila Callaghan, Lascivious
Something playfully balances sanity with insanity. As the grape vines
tended so lovingly by August, the characters intertwine delicately
fiercely fighting for love and freedom." -socal.com
"What Eugene O'Neill long sought in his many experiments using
psychological inner voices to reveal motivation, Callaghan has perfected
here.... the collective result reminds us how dependent we may be on the
approbation of our loved ones for our psychological well-being. It is
both unsettling and cathartic." -stagehappenings
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FEVER/DREAM
"The author of such risky, visionary scripts as That Pretty Pretty;
or, the Rape Play and the caustically lyrical Crumble (Lay Me
Down, Justin Timberlake), Callaghan here takes a more workmanlike
approach, devising two-plus hours' worth of ingenious parallels with
Calderon's original."
-The Washington Post
"[Callaghan] has a keen eye for the outlandish...[Fever/Dream] exudes the kind of infectious zaniness that occasionally attracts cult followings."
-Variety
"Fever/Dream is a pizzazz-filled concoction that skewers
corporatism with a generous supply side of laughs... comically irreverent...
[Callaghan] is without doubt the purveyor of top-shelf American wit, not
just in one-liners but also in concept. Even better, Callaghan is what I
would dub a crossover playwright; she writes as aptly from the male
point of view as she does from the female -- and that alone is a rarity." -Metro Weekly
"...fiendishly funny skewering of
corporate culture... The wit of Miss Callaghan's dialogue is so delightfully on-target"
-The Washington Times
"Witheringly comic
examination of corporate
bureaucracy... something like a
theatrical perpetual motion
machine... Manic in the best way possible."
-Express Night Out
"The theme of corporate entitlement couldn't resonate any better with a city weary of bankruptcies, bailouts, and bonuses."
-Decider DC
"An uproarious update..."
-Washington City Paper
"Language is important to Callaghan.... Fever/Dream provides plenty to think about and lots of laughs." -Curtain Up
"A frolic, but with bite... a solid night out that will make you laugh while it mirrors your own struggles."
-welovedc.com
"Playwright Sheila Callaghan gives us an hilarious play that pops the
American corporate blimp.... [She] staples together outwardly
nonsensical dialogue by anchoring Fever/Dream to Calderon's plot and
characters." -dctheatrescene.com
"I can't remember the last time a play made me laugh so hard. Leaving
the theater, my friend and I found ourselves overwhelmed by the sheer
quantity of memorable one-liners. Between the chuckles and belly laughs,
the dialog is surprisingly layered, and gives the audience plenty to
think about... Fever/Dream is about as funny as the sharpest Hollywood comedy, and far more rewarding."
-brightestyoungthings.com
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THAT PRETTY PRETTY; OR, THE RAPE PLAY
"Raunchy, savvy... the twisted, caffeinated world of the show imagines the collective unconscious of a culture where girls never
stop going wild... [Callaghan] push(es) her audience's buttons with an aggressive treatment of some of
the darker corners of the human psyche." -The New York Times
"Funny, scary, messy, and forthrightly feminist." -Village Voice
"A submersion in the anarchy of ambivalence: variously a rant, a
riff, a
rumble-about our notions of naturalism, objectification, perversity, and
beauty... There's sass and sarcasm in Callaghan's high-energy punk writing."
-John Lahr, The New Yorker
"Mind-blowing images and soul-crushing language flowing wildly."
-Backstage
"Offbeat satirical comedy... outrageous, intelligent fun..." -Variety
"Sheila Callaghan seems to have put third-wave feminism, Gen-Y gender
confusion and macho writerly cliches in a blender set to high speed. Her
manic, angry, deftly constructed That Pretty Pretty; or, the Rape Play
whipsaws between laughs and squirms as Callaghan trawls the mucky depths
of male-constructed femininity." -TimeOut NY
"This is one of the most fun, most seemingly random, and most
high-energy shows I've ever seen. I laughed out loud more than I do at
stand-up comedy routines, and I could not have predicted anything that
happened to save my life (which is a good thing)." -Curtain Up
"The play constantly shifts our perceptions of what's 'real' inside its
own play-world, what we take for granted and then are forced to
reconsider. The more Callaghan seems to be stripping down,
stylistically, to a conventional form of theatrical realism, the more
the play traffics in-and mocks-utterly familiar conventions....Callaghan's work tends to be linguistically dense, thick with lyric,
metaphor- and image-packed prose." -nytheatre.com
"Offers a refreshingly honest and modern take on some incredibly
relevant issues surrounding women, misogyny, male fantasy, war, and
female representations in art and culture...funny, and sad, and horrific,
and thoughtful." -www.citylitnyc.com
"Rarely does a play have the effect of pure explosion. That Pretty Pretty is a Carnivale of hairbands, feminist angst, male hormones and
pop culture references, all peppered with a healthy dose of Jane Fonda...This play has ambition. And dare I say it, balls."
-dailyobsessional.blogspot.com
"The clever juxtaposition of art film mores alongside crappy revisionism
of the 80's reveals that misogyny takes forms both highbrow and low. And
then, to have all the delicious absurdity of the play coming through the
keystrokes of a violently misogynist twenty something was just...yes.
Yes, yes, yes." -myinflammatorywrit.com
"This disturbing, provoking and brain stretching piece deals with the
subject of women's voices in media. It questions the portrayal of women
in an industry and a world where our images are distorted and
manipulated primarily by men and it does so in a way that draws in the
audience and plays with the convention of theatre itself."
-Therapidity.blogspot.com
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WE ARE NOT THESE HANDS
"The gap between rich and poor
yawns so wide it aches in Sheila
Callaghan's 'We Are Not These
Hands,' but much of the ache is
from laughter... 'Hands' is a comically engaging, subversively penetrating look
at the human cost of unbridled capitalism on both sides of the
river... The anger of the
play's social vision is partly concealed by its copious humor,
emerging more forcefully after it's over... 'Hands' bristles with bright, comic originality, particularly in
depicting the limitations of its people." -San Francisco Chronicle
"Bold and engaging, "We Are Not These Hands" is as fun as it
is frightening... rich in detail and full of humor and pathos." -Oakland Tribune
"Fascinating material by this intriguing New York playwright." -Backstage
"Quirkily compelling... [Callaghan's] attacking
much larger ideas about economics, politics, the
discrepancy between global haves and have-nots, and
the exoticization of the other. And once again she
manages to get her jabs in while offering up weirdly
engaging characters... Whimsical and daring... subversively smart." -East Bay Express
"Callaghan's characters reflect a set of tensions,
affinities, and contradictions as they negotiate love and survival
that speak fluently of their mutual alienation from a half-illusory
world of winners... a satisfying mix of the satirical, madcap, and bizarre...
a nicely original creation, broadly absurd yet also shaded by a
deep ambivalence." -San Francisco Bay Guardian
"Compelling... The
'have/have-not' dilemma that most U.S.
tourists are exposed to is not easily solved, and
Callaghan is engaging and not overbearing in dramatizing this
divide." -San Francisco Weekly
"A sense of wonder, both childlike and eccentric..."
-Berkeley Daily Planet
"So much utopian strength and poetry..."
-Suddeutsche Zeitung
"Swaggering eccentricity... Callaghan takes a lavish mud bath in broken
language...ripe apocalyptic slang; at its best, it's racy and unrefined,
the kind of stuff you might imagine kids in the back alleys of a
decaying world might sling around." -The Washington Post
"Like many young playwrights, Callaghan is interested in language, and
in particular words of loss and powerlessness. Moth and Belly speak in a
sort of invented Clockwork Orangish type dialect that allows them to
avoid nuance and specificity...intriguing and provocative."
-DC Theatre Reviews
"We Are Not These Hands wrestles with some big and potentially
disturbing ideas...bracingly honest." -Washington City Paper
"Willfully turning convention upside down... compelling." -Read Express
"Masterful handiwork... touching..." -Daily Colonial
"An abundance of interesting ideas and innovative twists... moments of
real power, as well as passages of dialogue as stunning as they are
hilarious... Callaghan is a very talented writer, full of anger as well
as an obvious desire to encompass the fractured realities of a
media-saturated, postindustrial world economy and its ramifications for
those most ignored and forgotten by it. She's got the chops to do it,
too." -Seattle Weekly
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DEAD CITY
"Wonderful... Sheila Callaghan's pleasingly witty and theatrical new drama that
is a love letter to New York masquerading as hate mail... [Callaghan]
writes with a world-weary tone and has a poet's gift for economical description. The entire dead city
comes alive..."
-New York TImes
"DEAD CITY, Sheila Callaghan's riff on James Joyce's ULYSSES is stylish, lyrical,
fascinating, occasionally irritating, and eminently worthwhile...
the kind of work that is thoroughly invigorating."
-Backstage
"Sheila
Callaghan surprises with an understandably
sprawling but always interesting narrative... It's an adventurous riff on [ULYSSES] with an especially well-rounded
and human character at play's center... at once realistic and fanciful."
-Variety
"[DEAD CITY] dissects the line between brilliance and just plain ol' crazy, blurring it even further... impressive."
-Village Voice
"Gutsy... [Callaghan's] prosaic voiceovers have it right... we glimpse how Joyce's wanderer once persueded
readers that the internal landscape is the one worth exploring." -TimeOut NY (Critic's
Pick)
"While [ULYSSES] provides the inspiration for this wonderful work,
the play stands on its own as a detailed and moving
portrait of contemporary life in New York City."
-Theatremania.com
"Joyce would have
gone to town with the bizarre sounds and phrases from our internetsoaked,
fast-food-stuffed, fifteen-minutes-of-fame world, as the many
remarkable scenes in this play show it's possible to do. There are some
storyline parallels with Ulysses, but more important in the inspiration
department is the way Callaghan picks up on and makes effective new use
of the combination of narrative sincerity and silliness, wonder and
cynicism, panorama and detail, that put ULYSSES in a class of its own. DEAD CITY
is very different, of course, but the shared underlying engagement
with language and the flow of modern life makes it a similarly vibrant and
frequently arresting creation."
-Gothamist
"Well-written, original plays are not a regular part of New York's
theatrical landscape. It's a delightful surprise when one appears, even if
it's a revision of an already published work. Yet it's dismissive to think of
DEAD CITY as just another link in a historical chain. Sheila Callaghan's
play is a unique and completely contemporary bit of magic." -Offoff Online
"Callaghan's
script provides a fresh and inventive variation on the classic
theme of alienation in the big city. Her female characters have a
vibrant, tragicomic presence. A compelling ride..."
-Showbusiness Weekly
"The play assumes on its own, enchanting logic... as the locations change and the
characters flit around town, we arrive at [the characters']
central struggle: being understood in a world in which we are often not heard, or choose
not to say what is on our minds. In the end, how they move beyond this emotional stasis
will move you, too."
-Downtown Express
"A thrilling theatrical trip...awe-inspiring."
-Flavorpill
"DEAD CITY valiantly succeeds in capturing the random swirl of
Joyce's onerous urban landscape, illustrating how a single day of navigating its perils
can be an adventure that reinvigorates the soul...fascinatingly potent."
-Gay City News
"Ambitious... [Callaghan] has a
fondness for heightened, poetic language..."
-nytheatre.com
"For a hundred
minutes, the city becomes like an oyster filled with infinite pearls... Callaghan has created a fluid,
lyrical world that riffs on reality as if it were jazz."
-New Theatre Corps
"Outstanding work by Sheila
Callaghan... wildly imaginative, and beautifully physical,
however uncomfortable... a smartly written, sharp, and witty script."
-Los Angeles Examiner
"Callaghan is not a playwright to dismiss... [she] has real insight and
a grasp on modernity - with all its obsessions and melancholiness - that few playwrights harness with such alacrity."
-Chicago Tribune
"Swifter and sexier than Joyce..."
-Chicagoist (Top 6 of 2006)
"Weirdly funny and haunting... a jagged stage poem."
-TimeOut Chicago
"Fleet, funny and smart."
-Center Stage Chicago
"...deliciously zany humor and surreal
aesthetic... [Callaghan's] brilliant. " -The Washington Post
"... surreal, allusive work... haunting,
gorgeously realized... funny and weirdly unsettling... " -Washington City Paper
"Callaghan mixes the real world with the surreal
in a manner that keeps the character and the audience off-balance in an interesting fashion. It's the kind of play where you
are not overly surprised when a dead character speaks... Sheila Callaghan is one of the brightest young playwrights on the American scene. The wit and lyrical
language in this play are fascinating. " -DC Theatre Scene
"Callaghan's work stands on its own....not quite magical realism, but something close to it...there's no questioning its exuberance. Callaghan's writing is feverish and bumpy." -Weekly Dig
"Smartly observed comedy...a poignant and ironic take on midlife." Star Tribune
"Callaghan is a witty writer, with a fine sense for the desperately
absurd." - TwinCities.com
"What balls! What beauty! Someone give her my number." -rakemag.com
"Explosions of words, thoughts,
lights, sounds and images surge into view,
glitter for a moment and then fade to black,
readying the stage for the next explosion...exuberant." -City Beat
"A funky, feminist,
21st-century riff...fun, messy, smart." -Cincinnati Enquirer
"Deft,
poignant and funny." -Columbus Dispatch
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CRUMBLE (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake)
"This whimsically eloquent view of a widow, her daughter and their anthropomorphic apartment, all bereft and bonkers,
is a potent example of postmodern narrative invention...
Ionesco never blended absurdity, terror and sentiment more strikingly... [a] sweetly audacious parable...
Callaghan's breakthrough work." -Los
Angeles Times (Critic's Pick)
"[A] gothic comedy which balances wit and kitsch with scars and wounds, while wielding a preteen's sense of
morbidity and drama to strike some chilling blows." -LA Weekly (Recommended)
"Soon-to-be classic... whatever you do, don't miss it... amazing..." -Entertainment Today
"Here's Sheila Callaghan at her best in this delightfully warped one-act... [an] important and unstoppable new writer." -Reviewplays
"Sheila Callaghan's breakout play... very twisted, very funny..." -LA Downtown News (from the 'Don't Miss List')
"Crafty, eccentric, spikily poetic... a compellingly steely comic riff on pain...
Callaghan's story tells of a world of fluke accidents and terrible
scarrings, where kinship dynamics are about as reliable as
nitroglycerine." - The Washington Post
"Small, dark, and gratifyingly odd." - Washington City Paper
"Crumble is a beautifully written play that manages to walk that fine
line between the experimental and the accessible. Sad without seeking
pity, funny without pandering, Callaghan's is a refreshing talent." -
MetroWeekly
"[Crumble] draws an astute and affecting portrait of two sisters; the
preteen daughter/niece whose mercurial moods and needs whet their
differences; and the ways in which inanimate objects can serve as a
silent sounding board for their, and by extension, our unarticulated
fears and desires, and as a springboard to help us identify and at last,
deal with them." -DC Theatre Scene
"This tiny morsel of a play allows the dialogue to sing rather than be
stuffed." - Potomac Stages
"An unexpected jolt of good theater... Without resorting to sap, [Callaghan] conjures real emotional pathos...
a dark, screwed-up version of Judy Blume." -New City Chicago (Tip of the Week, Top 5 of '05)
"Moments of nail-biting anguish... weirdly satisfying...
Callaghan's writing is studded with startling descriptive passages." -Chicago Tribune (Top 10 "fringe" shows of '05)
"[Callaghan] understands that theater is the ideal place in which to explore nonrealistic notions...
original... intriguing... as off-kilter as the playwright's imagination." -Chicago Sun Times (Recommended)
"Feverishly ambitious... undeniable heart..." -TimeOut Chicago
"Heightened language and acid humor.... if of the 'I must laugh or I shall never stop screaming' variety..." -East Bay Express
"An unflinching look at the power of grief... rooted, real and recognizable in its depiction of adolescent angst and awakening." -Inside Bay Area
"This is an amazing script, one I want to get my hands on and read again and again. It's touching, bittersweet,
brutally honest at times, and freakishly surreal at others... This is not a fluffy show, nor is it depressing.
It is thought provoking." -East Bay Voice
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CRAWL, FADE TO WHITE
"[Callaghan's] a gutsy writer with a gift for creating vivid images rooted in the
emotional life of her characters." - The New York Times
"Engagingly quirky... as far as playwrights unpacking complex ideas, Callaghan provides a
shining example." - TimeOut NY
"Callaghan is a sensuous writer, interested in texture, sound, shape." -
Village Voice
"True to the denials, insanities, and backward glances that constitute
psychic wounds refusing to scab over." - New Theater Corps
"It is unusual enough to interest the veteran theatergoer, accessible to
the casual viewer, and not to be missed." --offoffonline.com
"Well-constructed, well-executed, and it showcases a dedication to
theatricality and craft." - The L Magazine
"Sheila's work often has this uncanny ability to reach inside me and
unlock a tiny door I'd forgotten about. And once it's open I feel like I
can breathe a little easier, think a little freer, and write a little
crazier." -Alejandro Morales, lowercaseletter.wordpress.com
"A flair for the peculiar distinguishes playwright Sheila Callaghan...
[she finds] raw emotion under the deadpan uproar... 'Crawl' has arresting elegance." -Los
Angeles Times (Recommended)
"Sheila Callaghan takes us through the looking glass into a play with surreal plot developments...
a strange-but-touching study of estrangement, loneliness and reconciliation." -LA Weekly (Recommended)
"Callaghan's dialogue is sharp and bizarrely incisive, surely heralding another step in the evolution of a great contemporary playwright." -Entertainment Today
"The brilliance of Sheila Callaghan's play and a lesson to every aspiring writer is that she takes a mother-daughter conflict,
dissects it, probes every aspect with jewel-like precision, incorporates flashbacks, contrasts it with frightened surreal neighbors -- then presents
the results in 90 taut minutes structured with the lyric prose of a poem. This densely layered play raises as many questions as it
answers but it's a quirky delight. " -CurtainUp
"Exceptional... a remarkable achievement that makes me realize how fortunate we all are to be beneficiaries of the haunted souls of
tortured artists in general--and possibly Callaghan in particular..." -Reviewplays
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KATE CRACKERNUTS
"There's a wild terrain of words in this playwright's head... fantastical... a primal psychological crucible..." -The Village Voice
"Callaghan's wordplay is evocative and apt..." -TimeOut NY
"An off-beat adaptation... eclectic but well-constructed, inventive... energetic, fun, and funny!" -Offoffonline
"Strange, dense, brilliant wordplay...
part poetry slam, part rave, part dog-eared storybook theater, and all
edgy, infectious, ultra-theatrical entertainment. Kate Crackernuts is an
adult fairy tale that, like its tough but vulnerable heroine, follows a
warped dream logic while keeping its sharp-tongued wits about it." -Los
Angeles Times (Critic's Pick)
"A new mythology for the 21st
century... it's a great ride." -Backstage West (Critic's Pick)
"The tone is not intended to sound poetic, but to break the audience
free from mundane reality and evoke the faraway dreaminess of myth."
-The Arizona Republic
"[Sheila Callaghan's] flair for writing modern poetic prose cannot be
topped. It is the most striking language I have heard on a stage in a
long while." -theatermaven.com
"A pulsing dreamscape where fairy tale meets rave...
Breathtaking, ingenious innovation." -The Trojan Horse
"Watching it is rather like viewing a Pablo Picasso exhibit - full of
color, angles, movement, musicians - and if you must ask what this
actually means, you've missed the show." -The Herald Times
"Wild, quirky, funny tale of quest and conquest... Kate Crackernuts is
funny, it's also a little risque, and a bit touching." -WFIU Indiana
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SCAB
"SCAB... is a textbook example of promising work,
written with a yen for interesting language and liberally salted with
well-observed details of the lives of newly minted adults... the play
shines." -The New York Times
"SCAB is an offbeat, comedic
exploration of friendship, love, pain and healing ...the humor comes out
naturally in the interaction between the contrasting roommates as well
as in the outrageous portrayal of academic snobbery." -Backstage
"... Darkly funny forays into the surreal... Callaghan shows
talent in the inventive fantasy sequences... A stylish production " -The
Village Voice
"Sheila Callaghan crafts sparkling dialogue for
two goofy graduate students in LA... romantic entanglements are added
with wit, and sensitivity. A whip-smart play." -TimeOut NY (Critic's
Pick)
"Rarely does a play give such an impression that the
characters were alive long before I began watching them and continued
with their lives after I went home... The plot is unusual without being
implausible, the dialogue is intelligent while still sounding natural...
I would watch this play again without hesitation." -offoffoff.com
"A provocative playwright who's just beginning to garner a
national following, Callaghan creates work that's realistic and
unpredictable, dark and funny, reassuring and disturbing." -Philadelphia
Weekly
"...it's opposites-attract meets love-triangle, though Callaghan spices it up by
bringing into this fray a heckling Virgin Mary statue, dark angels who
play tiny musical instruments and relatives who poop their pants. This magical David
Lynch-esque undertow sets "Scab" apart from others in this oeuvre.
Where some plays are quirky, "Scab" is
downright weird; where others give closure, Callaghan opens a wound." -Seattle Times
"...a fanciful comedy drama... novel and
absorbing." -The Seattle Post Intelligencer
"The piece is beautifully written by Callaghan, whose
ear for natural dialogue is superb... Intertwining painfully detailed
scenes of intimacy with extravagant dream sequences featuring a
foul-mouthed Virgin Mary and a pair of black-winged angels, Callaghan
shows us that the women's path to self-realization is alternately
difficult and joyous." -Theatremania
"Droll and ironic,
Callaghan writes about young people believably and with intelligence....
full of big laughs." -The Oakland Tribune
"Intricately woven....
a thoughtful tale, darkly comic, intensely personal and worthy."
-Contra Costa Times
"Wandering from the intimacy and hilarity of
girl talk to the incoherent blather of academia to the intensity and
illogic of Annie's neurosis, "Scab" is both an homage to the amusing
banter that overlies our superficial daily existence and a look into the
complicated tangle of emotions just beneath... wildly imaginative." -The
Daily Cal
"...disarmingly poignant..." -Chicago Reader
"... unsparing black comedy... poignant..." -LA Weekly
"Brilliantly and poetically rendered... [Callaghan's] playful sense of
language and her attunement to her characters are enthralling." -TimeOut Chicago
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