Three Stars - Six characters in search of off-Loop actors- Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune 2/7/12.  "The quirky, lovable aesthetic of The Hypocrites is going to be in safe hands with new artistic director Halena Kays, based on her quirky and rather lovable new production of "Six Characters in Search of an Author," that meta-dramatic classic from 1921.

This is one of those talky plays that anyone who has taken a few dramatic literature classes has likely studied and appreciated — as William Shakespeare well knew, theater about theater done right gives an audience goose bumps — but that those us who consume metadrama for a living rarely relish seeing again.

But this brand new adaptation and updating — which lasts for just a brisk 90 minutes — from Steve Moulds is fresh, insightful and a great deal of fun.

As the audience walks into the basement of the Chopin Theatre, we're treated as if we're in attendance at an open rehearsal for a new touring production of Sean Graney's hit production of "The Pirates of  Penzance," which happens to have been the actual last show by the Hypocrites, created by the former artistic director. To the chagrin of the already irritated actors ("Are we actually rehearsing ... or pretending to rehearse so the audience can see what it looks like?"), the great Graney is not there. He's too busy. His place has been taken by a neophyte, Brennan Buhl, playing himself; everyone in the outer frame kind of plays themselves.

The low-paid, exploitation-weary Chicago actors — dead-on performances from John Taflan and Laura McKenzie — are irritated at being part of a second-tier restaging of "someone else's artistic triumph," but they hang in there, partly because they've been promised that David Cromer, who created "Our Town," the most successful Hypocrites show ever, may be in the bar after rehearsal. And you never know what might come from that.

So this "audience-engagement event" begins, only to be interrupted by the arrival of, well, the familiar "Six Characters," in search not only of an author but an off-Loop theater company willing to work with kids. "If you're looking for a playwright," McKenzie's actress says, anxious to get back to rehearsal and wary of stage children, "you should try Chicago Dramatists." But the weird period-people in the strange wigs (costumer Alison Heryer does great work) do not move.

Actually, this tortured family refuses to move in quite the visually spectacular fashion, all arranged like the opening tableau of "The Addams Family." And so, the modern-day actors go with the flow, drawing  from their Chicago actors' improv tool box, even as they resist, like all good off-Loop players, being referred to as improvisers. Oh, the ignominy. But these are unusual circumstances. Characters actually need actors, for a change.

From that point onward, Moulds adheres more closely to the original script, although Kays consistently maintains key elements of the aesthetic that Hypocrites fans have grown to love: the use of environmental staging, the provision of swivel chairs so the audience can move around, the use of the outer lobby of the basement space at the Chopin Theatre. Even if you've never been to an off-Loop show in your life,  you'll enjoy the vitality of the production. But if you're familiar with this world, you'll enjoy it even more and appreciate the sharpness of Kays' satiric scalpel; she's been around this community a long time, and it shows.

The main inner play — wherein the period characters insist their story be told — has some truly arresting moments, and there is one performance from Samantha Gleisten as the Mother that is as honest and  unstinting as you could wish. Ada Gray, the child actress playing the truly creepy kid, also fixes her all-knowing eyes on her prey in the spookiest fashion.

This part of the show does not go as far as it  should in the truth-and-honesty department — if it did, the contrast with the free-wheeling humor of the outer frame would have forged a truly blistering and revelatory show that could well have followed  "Our Town" to New York. But it goes far enough for you to see what Kays was intending and see the sophistication of her genuinely Pirandellian effort".

Highly Recommended - ‘Six Characters’ brings life to a ponderous play at The-Hypocrites - Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun Times 2/13/12.  "The Hypocrites have long demonstrated an amazing talent for putting a whole new spin on what some might consider dusty theatrical classics  — everything from the tragedies of Sophocles, to Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” to a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.

Now they have worked their latest miracle with “Six Characters in Search of an Author,” Luigi Pirandello’s 1921 experiment in the absurd that, long before we were thinking about the virtual,  dealt with notions of reality and unreality, actual existence vs. theatrical existence, and the whole notion of role ­playing and imagination.

Using Steve Mould’s highly distilled, 85-minute adaptation, and form-fitting a wonderfully self-mocking framing device — which feels completely improvised, but in fact is sharply calculated and full of “inside theater” humor — Halena Kays, the company’s gifted new artistic director (and immediate successor to its inspired founder, Sean Graney), has brought intensely vivid, frequently chilling life to a play that can sometimes seem ponderous. Not only is her casting superb. But she has made audacious use of the cavernous, yet intimate basement space of the Chopin Theatre that The Hypocrites continually turn into such a fascinating laboratory, and captured the full mystery of Pirandello’s mind-bending drama.

The play’s initial sequence captures all the goofy elements involved in a brush-up rehearsal for a show staged by The Hypocrites themselves, with a something less than disciplined gathering of an agitated Stage Manager (Ryan Walters is perfect); a vaguely inept young Director (a nicely lost-in-space Brennan Buhl); a harried, mildly neurotic Actress (the wholly believable Laura McKenzie), and a late-arriving Actor (a comically distracted John Taflan).

But as they begin work something remarkable happens. A group of “characters,” dressed in black mourning clothes (by way of costume designer Alison Heryer), and looking rather Aryan with their ghostly pallor  and yellow-blonde hair (Pirandello was a big supporter of Mussolini), arrive at the theater and demand to have their story brought to life. Discarded by the playwright who first imagined them, they are a searingly  dysfunctional family starved for recognition and realization. And they come with a tawdry tale — a script inside their heads. The “real actors” reluctantly agree to try their hand at acting out the characters’ destinies, and there is immense frustration on both sides.

To be sure, this family of six is a tormented assemblage: Father (a scorching turn by Larry Garner as the cruel, aging man who has indulged in a last-gasp sexual outing); Mother (Samantha Gleisten, a mostly silent  sufferer, mourning for her dead lover and estranged son); that Son (an aptly sullen Ted Evans); the Stepdaughter, a victim of incest (played by Stevi Baston with an ideally prim yet ferociously chilly sexuality);  and her two young siblings, the Boy (Michael Milito) and Girl (Ada Gray), both of whom have extraordinary faces and display uncanny discipline and eerie stillness throughout.

The six cast a powerful spell from the moment of their appearance, contrasting starkly with the playfully stumbling naturalism of the “real actors.” Then comes the moment when precisely what is real, or not,  is put in question and the layers of truth and artifice pile up.

This production marks a great start for Kays. And while Graney will continue to work with The Hypocrites, he should rest easy that his company has a worthy new torch-bearer".

Recommended - Six Characters in Search of an Author - Tony Adler, Chicago Reader 2/8/12.  "A pioneering 20th-century mindfuck, and the godfather of every postmodern mindfuck that came after, Luigi Pirandello's classic
 play posits a family of characters  who've been imagined by an author but never fully realized. Anguished over their twilight existence, they invade a theater where a company is rehearsing and demand  to be the next play. The family and the ensemble begin a process that will ultimately call into question the reality of reality and the unreality of fiction. Pirandello called his script a satire, ending it on a note that subverts the dark tale the family has to tell, and director Halena Kays plays much of this 90-minute show, appropriately and effectively, for laughs. But Kays and adapter Steve Moulds also recognize the ability of even made-up moments to be devastating. Their production for the Hypocrites allows those moments to resonate powerfully".

Four Stars - Six Characters in Search of an Author - Oliver Sava, TimeOut Chicago 2/9/12.  "During rehearsal for a touring production of Sean Graney’s Pirates of Penzance, six ashen figures appear
in the Chopin Theatre’s basement lobby, looking for someone to put on their tragic story.

They’ve chosen the right company to do it. The Hypocrites have made their reputation on breathing new life into old works, and Steve Moulds’s premiere adaptation of Luigi Pirandello’s 1921 metatheatrical work embraces the hip aesthetic, casual atmosphere and clever audience interaction the theater has employed for 15 years.

The lines between reality and fiction are beautifully blurred by director Halena Kays, who stages the production across three platforms that the audience follows in swivel chairs. Playing themselves, actors Brennan Buhl, Ryan Walters, Laura McKenzie and John Taflan sell the illusion of spontaneity, appearing as mystified as the audience when the characters appear. As they mold the characters’ story into  a piece of theater, we peek into the adaptation process, beginning with trepidatious rehearsals that transform into a fully realized world.

Larry Garner and Stevi Baston provide intrigue as the Father and Stepdaughter, the characters’ spokespeople, using the stage for their personal catharses. Each of the characters is performed with a heightened  theatricality that fits his or her uncompleted nature; they exist only within the two intense scenes they wish to see performed. As these moments are given form, the audience creates the connective tissue  among them, becoming the author the characters were searching for all along".

TOWER OF TERROR, BASEMENT OF BEWILDERMENT -- 'Six Characters in Search of an Author' at The Hypocrites - Johnny Oleksinski, www.Podunkcritic.com - "Every show by The Hypocrites has a sweet and special way of making you feel like a kid again. The rapturous joy of Pirates of Penzance, the storybook lessons of Sophocles: Seven Sicknesses, and the rich, cornered solitude of Woyzeck all connected me in the most heartfelt sense to my own, more innocent past. And now, in her inaugural debut as Artistic Director, Halena Kays, has dug ever deeper into the complex psyche of youth, trapping audiences in an all-engulfing haunted house. But this haunted house has none of the connotational holiday cheesiness that usually comes to mind, but rather lingering, contemplative terror. This razor-sharp, renovated Six Characters In Search of an Author curdles the blood and satiates the mind.

Director Kays’ uniquely stamped renovation makes one killer, profound choice – it includes the audience. Luigi Pirandello's play was originally set during the rehearsal of another Pirandello play on an essentially bare, proscenium
 stage. But in Steve Moulds’ premiere adaptation, the playwright has taken Luigi’s framework and made it company-specific, inviting the audience to an open rehearsal for a new tour of The Pirates of Penzance, which in actuality
 closed only three weeks ago. This remarkably intelligent move places the audience inside of the play; with the action occurring on stages perched all around the room. So, when the ghoulish family enters the basement (the most
 paralyzing moment onstage this season), your personal space becomes violated and disturbed in the most theatrically satisfying way imaginable.

Upon entering, the characters implore the raucously stereotypical actors (John Taflan and Laura McKenzie), stage manager (Ryan Walters) and director (a sarcastically charismatic Brennan Buhl) to put the tale of their lives, a melodrama of incest, murder, and momentous tragedy, onstage in a play. That’s what they do, right? They create plays. But seeing those grotesque, horrific events acted out before their eyes as a cheap, stunted fabrication of such blinding pain proves intolerable cruelty. And the six characters are forced to relive and reembody their darkest moments, as the actors and audience watch on, dumbstruck.

Six Characters in Search of an Author is considered a significant stepping-stone in modern drama. A reaction to the onset of realism, the initial reactions of audiences were impassioned and often real bitter. But too frequently is the play’s true brilliance muddled by that immense scholarly worth, with productions and adaptations being intellectually crowded by the playwright's complicated thought process. This stylish adaptation by Steve Moulds takes much of the plotiness out of Pirandello's talkier original and brings nuanced focus and heightened trauma to the six characters' forlorn plight.

Their tragedy is echoed in Scenic Designer Lizzie Bracken’s quiet battleground set in the Chopin basement theatre. The space is still littered with backyard kiddie pools, strewn about Christmas lights, and dismantled pieces of  the Pirates runway stage; the dead remnants of a beach party laid to rest in a woeful, drafty crypt. The six characters float about the room, amidst the endlessly curious audience, lost in a hopeless, tragic, ideological purgatory.

Six Characters is cast with skillfull consideration and a Poe-etic aesthetic by Kays. The six characters (Father, Mother, Son, Stepdaughter, Boy, and Girl) together create a silhouette so memorable that I shudder, even now,  thinking of its amoebic togetherness and hopeless emanation. Adorned in Alison Heryer’s svelt, yet modest modern gothic costumes, they are coldly removed yet creepily metropolitan. Samantha Gleisten’s performance as Mother bleeds sincerity and maternal desire, wanting so much but receiving so little. As Son, Ted Evans makes impeccable use of his imposing brow, giving piercing stares that could perceivably blind any nonchalant onlooker who meets his gaze.

Father, Larry Garner, while appropriately ghastly, occasionally becomes a twitch too similar to a Magician, overstuffing his performance with conjurer’s hands and quick, twisted speech patterns. The mood he carries, however, is aptly sinister and emotionally heavy, giving credence to his paternal leadership. But attached at the hip of these sinister adult performances are two young kids giving shockingly complex turns that solidify the production’s already monstrous tension.

Too often do children become necessary space-fillers in plays. They have to be included in order to complete the family unit, but child actors typically, through no fault of their own, cannot act as capably as the adults they are  put onstage with. But Halena Kays has struck gold with Ada Grey and Michael Milito, playing Girl and Boy respectively in this production. Although they speak not a single word, their wounded facades talk with stronger conviction than any other character. Their moments together are spontaneous and devastatingly serene, oozing an iconic Children of The Corn creepiness, but with tremendous suffering beneath their glazed expressions.

Kays' ingenuity with fluid use of space coupled with Steve Moulds' enticing new adaptation have given life to some of the most alluring and terrifying images I have ever seen on a stage, and certainly the most breathtaking pictures of season. The audience is seated on swivel chairs with 360 degrees of motion, allowing for the strange deception of freedom. You can spin in all directions, yet you cannot break from where you spin; the illusion of being unchained.

Six Characters is a play of illusions, in fact. The characters become an illusion to the rehearsing actors as they begin to question the nature of their existence. And strangely those meta-theatrical actors and creatives become illusions to us, the audience. Characters upon characters. Perhaps we too are just another notch on that vicious cycle; characters ourselves, also being watched. Searching for an author.

Six Characters in Search of an Author seemed, to me, like an offbeat choice for the Hypocrites, a company known for bestowing its playfulness onto stuffy, but nonetheless compelling aging dramas. But as the play went on, Kays’  intentions became transparently clear. You see, there is a scene in which the Actor and Actress portray a rendezvous in the back room of a sleazy dress shop. The scene plays out for only a few seconds before a fight breaks out  over the rehearsal furniture. Madame Pace’s pale yellow, intricate couch has been replaced with a rough and tumble, black rehearsal block, which makes Father and Stepdaughter absolutely irate. The characters wonder how their story could possibly be realistically depicted using stand-in furniture, street clothes, and thrift store props, reiterating Pirandello’s own commentary on realism.

That got me thinking… Here, in Chicago, where the theatre has bestially gnawed at realism’s connective tissue for decades, reside The Hypocrites, who, in their own way, ask that same question with every production they put up.  How can artists realistically tell a story? With Six Characters in Search of an Author, new Artistic Director Halena Kays is asking that question once more; redefining the real, embracing the obscure, and rebelling against the  tired norm".

The art of viewing art: The Hypocrites, ‘Six Characters’- Devlyn Camp, Chicago Theater Review - "On three stages surrounded by swiveling chairs, The Hypocrites, in their newest production, make an overwhelming and energizing attempt at explaining the intellectual creation and staging of a story. To the untrained eye, actors are men and women playing people by learning lines, wearing costumes and mocking physical gestures, but underneath is a mind churning away at executing the difficult art of storytelling (and imagine the effort a writer  must put in, needing to understand all of the characters!). The untrained eye may not even completely follow the strand of puns, points, and debates in The Hypocrites’ production of Luigi Pirandello’s 6 Characters in Search of An Author. The non-theatre folk aren’t exactly in the Hypocrite’s demographic anyway, as the audience generally consists of actors off for the evening, those dang theater critics, and regular theatergoers. Viewers of the show are almost in that non-sarcastically, actually enjoyable script text analysis class in college, as the layered storytelling cuts and weaves drama and comedy among two starkly different stories almost seamlessly.

Opening on a late-starting put-in rehearsal for the touring cast of The Hypocrites’ recent production of Pirates of Penzance, delightful Laura McKenzie jabs at mockable annoying qualities in actors, playing a fictional version of
 her self. The “late start” to the rehearsal is rather believable. For a moment the audience flutters through their programs thinking they may have come to an open – and hilarious – rehearsal. During this rehearsal, six developed characters trapped in their own unstaged story intrude, asking the actors to present their play. The people are classic, dramatic horror story-style characters doomed forever in a moment’s tragedy.

The story then follows the 6 retelling their untold story as the Hypocrites try to act it out. While simultaneously engaging the audience in the story, the play also allows the viewer to step back and see it from the outside in:  actors playing actors watching people play themselves as characters while trying to play those people’s characters… simultaneously maintaining an actual suspension of disbelief in the audience. The Hyprocrites make a great point  for the paradox of theatre: There is a drastic difference between an actor onstage and a person offstage, and an actor’s onstage interpretation of those people as characters. The 6 characters become extremely agitated at the  Hyprocrites for retelling their story with word-for-word dialogue and movement, while still relaying a different tone and tale. When a person becomes a character, and their story becomes the play, their actions’ intentions change  in every storyteller and actors’ interpretation.

Remember when I said “the untrained eye may not even completely follow…”? The Hyprocrites very successfully execute this intricate and advanced pair intertwined of stories. Where one set of eyes might see a mess of people relaying
 lines, another set will see frantic and funny, methodically planned points on how to view art".