Critic's Choice ; "pitch -perfect performances" - Chicago Reader 11/29/07
Critic's Pick - TimeOut Chicago
Top 5 Shows to See Now! - New City.

Critic's Choice - "Jon Marans's tidy, predictable 1996 Pulitzer finalist is almost formulaic: brash, emotionless, technically proficient American piano prodigy Stephen, burned out at age 25, must learn to make music again under the tutelage of crusty, bitter, emotionally indulgent Viennese relic Professor Mashkan, whose career is in shambles. But Marans gives such honest nuances to these cliched characters and leads them so bravely into the darkest corners of Vienna's anti-Semitic history that the slightest suspension of disbelief—buoyed by the pitch-perfect performances of Vincent L. Lonergan and Shawn Pfautsch—allows nearly everything onstage to ring true. Signal Ensemble Theatre director Christopher Prentice wisely makes no effort to disguise the play’s schematic structure with auteur cleverness. He simply clears the decks, giving his actors the space they need to develop a chemistry volatile enough to propel them through two and a half well-paced, deeply felt hours". - Justin Hayford, Chicago Reader 11/29/07

Critic's Pick . - "There are actors’ plays, ones that pit diametric traits against each other—intellect clashes with passion, indulgence wrangles discipline, loveably messy takes on obsessively pin-neat—that give a pair of performers their two-hours, traffic of the stage to display their chops, maybe chew scenery, really work. Marans, though, raises the bar for the “hands” in his two-hander. Though the old odd-couple dynamic pushes Old Wicked Songs through predictable territory, both actors, one portraying a middle-aged, Austrian music professor and the other an arrogant, smirky American pianist in his twenties, must be able to play classical piano. And sing. In German. And do these things not just credibly, but expressively. Marans’ central conceit is to mirror the growing connection between Stephen (Pfautsch), who’s fled to Vienna to break his creative block, and bombastic but brilliant Professor Mashkan (Lonergan) in a single piece of music (Dichterliebe, a gorgeous, gentle 19th-century song cycle by German Romantic composer Robert Schumann). Songs could be excruciating, but the play, which feels a tad overworked in the metaphor department as well as overlong (the penultimate scene felt, and was applauded, as if it was the end) is at its best a pleasingly simple study of two characters—who seem like honest-to-God real people—realized instinctively and delicately here. This never feels like an also-ran in the actors’ hands, whether they’re playing the piano or off each other" - Meghan Powell, TimeOut Chicago 11/28/07

5 Shows to See Now! . "Part buddy play, part music appreciation lecture, part Holocaust drama, Jon Marans’ "Old Wicked Songs" tries to go off in so many different directions that the audience is worn out trying to keep up. And kudos to the stellar performances of Vincent L. Lonergan and the House Theatre’s Shawn Pfautsch in this Christopher Prentice-directed Signal Ensemble Theatre production that we want to--we really do. Their characters are so likable and seem to need each other so badly--Lonergan plays a lonely, crusty old music professor and Pfautsch plays a young, brash and shallow prodigy--that when Lonergan finally agrees to reveal his troubled past to Pfautsch, we feel immensely cheated that the scene simply fades out and we never get to hear the old man’s life story in his own words. Some audience members were so confused by such an awkward fade-out that they began clapping, assuming the play must be over. Even more bizarre--potential spoiler alert--is that we are asked to believe that a man who has survived the horrors of Dachau would make glib, anti-Semitic remarks as a pre-emptive strike in a 1986 Vienna that is about to see Kurt Waldheim become president of Austria despite his then newly revealed Nazi past. Robert Schumann’s song cycle "Dichterliebe" acts as a leitmotiv throughout the play, and both actors are able to play and sing bits of it at a reasonably competent level, Pfautsch having to go from singing it through his head and in a monotone manner to full diaphragm-singing evoking the emotional meaning of Heinrich Heine’s poems. These musical moments of self-discovery are the best in the play, even if they are seldom reflected in how little is ultimately revealed about the characters themselves" - Dennis Polkow - NewCity 12/6/07

"Old Wicked Songs" makes for a pleasant, if predictable duet.
Jon Marans' two-character play about a hotshot American piano prodigy who's lost his passion and the aging Austrian professor who re-ignites it, is a sentimental, formulaic drama about conflict, reconciliation and the redemptive power of music.
Signal Ensemble Theatre's respectful, leisurely revival directed by Christopher Prentice features Shawn Pfautsch as buttoned-up Stephen Hoffman, the arrogant, technically brilliant but artistically bereft young musician. At a professional and personal impasse, Stephen goes to Vienna to study piano with a master. But upon his arrival, he learns that he's been assigned instead to study voice with Vincent L. Lonergan's quirky Josef Mashkan, a professor who possesses the passion and sensitivity of a virtuoso performer but has journeyman skills. Like, his reluctant pupil, Mashkan is battling the same kind of demons confronting Stephen.
Marans sets the play in 1986 Austria during the presidential campaign of Kurt Waldheim, whose participation in Nazi atrocities was revealed during his run (a detail that becomes more important as the play goes on). The action unfolds in Mashkan's comfortably faded atelier against German composer Robert Schumann's "Dichterliebe," a song-cycle set to poems by 19th century German poet Heinrich Heine. Mashkan assigns the songs to Stephen (who finds them confounding) and the play follows their relationship over the three months during which time cultural and generational clashes ensue, life lessons are dispensed, secrets are revealed and conciliation occurs.
The demanding roles require actors who can also play piano and sing. On that account, both men deliver. But of the duo, Lonergan's endearing, nicely balanced performance as the shrewd and wily professor is the stronger. As the appropriately uptight Stephen, Pfautsch handles the lighter moments well, but is less convincing in the emotional scenes and his character's transition from petulant performer to respectful protégé rings a little false. That said, the actors have a nice rapport and some of their scenes are quite affecting. One in particular, near the end of the second act, so engaged the audience they applauded the end of the scene as though it were the end of the play. But unlike the audience that mistakenly applauds between symphony movements, it was a gesture of appreciation.
Ultimately, Signal delivers a solid production of an agreeably conventional play grounded in stereotypes and sentiment and filled with aphorisms like "Art consists of knowing the basic rules and realizing the time to deviate from them," "Silence is the most difficult thing… only in silence do we listen and grow," and "The combination of joy and sadness, this is the core of truly beautiful music. Just as it is the core of drama. Of life."
Marans' play is rather like the composer who looms over it. In describing Schumann, National Public Radio's Ted Libbey called him a "problematic genius (who) wrote some of the greatest music of the Romantic era and also some of the weakest."
"Old Wicked Songs" has some lovely moments. At times, it sings. Unfortunately, the play never really soars". - Barbara Vitello, Daily Herald 11/23/07