[The Designated Mourner] pierces the darkness of the human experience, asking us to weigh the precious pretensions of art against the brutality of a world without people who care about such seemingly useless subjects. ... Directed with heart-crushing grace and beautifully acted by this smart cast - Dean gives the performance of his career here - the troubling play puts forth a bleak worldview that doesn't seem all that far-fetched.
To its enormous credit, the play will leave each audience member unraveling a different thread of thought by the end of the night, but there is no doubt that all will agree on the manifold virtues of its execution. Catastrophic's production of The Designated Mourner matches the company's dedication to challenging pieces with a pure distillation of craft. With an eye towards subtlety, the intimate staging and the actors' engaging performances turn an unquestionably heady script about privilege and contradiction into something personal and moving.
The Designated Mourner is one of the most riveting, disturbing, most brilliantly produced plays of the season. Jason Nodler's direction is simple, almost cinematic in its intimacy, and intense, overwhelmingly and fiercely frightening in its purposefully claustrophobic presentation. This is the kind of theatre that makes me love live theatre and I believe you will embrace it wholeheartedly as well.
Quietly stunning ... Nodler and his Catastrophic team have done it again. They've taken a uniquely challenging, unsettling and multilayered piece of theatrical writing, put their stamp on it and brought it to life with intimacy, immediacy and a sense of urgency. ... each of these fine actors has never been better. .... The Designated Mourner is a must.