Critics' views

Over the years, various critics have had this to say about Jeune Lune productions:

Last update: June 27, 2008 - 11:03 AM

"The seven young comics who will turn you inside out laughing are Barbra Berlovitz. Dominique Serrand, Bob Rosen, Vincent Gracieux, Steven Epp, Christopher Bayes and Mary Lou Penaz, ably assisted by pianist Michael Koerner."

March 1985 Minneapolis Star review (by Peter Vaughan) of "Yang Zen Froggs" • • •

"What is intended to be exotic is too often sophomoric, more a display of technical efficiency than theatrical magic, overloaded with recycled generic experimental theater tricks."

December 1993 New York Times review of "The Green Bird" at Yale Repertory • • •

"It streamlines grand opera into something more like guerrilla theater."

September 1994 USA Today review of "Don Juan Giovanni" at Berkeley Repertory Theater • • •

"This is a 'Hamlet' played insanely and desperately and hilariously. It's not the only 'Hamlet' one would hope to see, but it is alive with laughs and salaciousness and mad anger."

October 2003 New York Post review of "Hamlet" at the New Victory Theater • • •

"A starkly beautiful production."

June 2004 Boston Herald review of "The Miser" at American Repertory Theatre • • •

"Typically for this Minneapolis-based ensemble, the justly acclaimed production feels as if all of its elements -- text, actors, design and lighting -- spring from the same creative impulse. With minimum fuss and maximum effect, the Jeune Lune production is great theater, true to the serious implications in Molière, yet artfully entertaining from start to finish."

October 2005 San Diego Union-Tribune review of "The Miser" at La Jolla Playhouse • • •

"While the production is a visual marvel, so strenuously performed that the mere act of watching it proves exhausting, it proves wearying -- at three hours -- in other ways as well."

October 2005 Los Angeles Times review of "The Miser" at La Jolla Playhouse • • •

"Theatre de la Jeune Lune's opera productions are so intimate and immediate, watching them can make me feel like I'm eating crème brulée while sitting inside the dish. One experiences the sights, scents and feel with an encompassing sense of satisfaction. Jeune Lune's 'Carmen,' an exquisite, bloody, palpable production that opened Saturday, is similarly memorable."

August 2003 Star Tribune review (by Michael Anthony) of "Carmen" • • •

"The company's latest creation is fanciful and ingenious. Replete with the signature elements of a Jeune Lune show, it washes over a viewer like a dream, whimsically mixing the mundane and the wondrous."

-- February 2008 review (by Rohan Preston) of "Fishtank."