“ 'Evanston' has moments of grace and sympathy, mostly owing to the conviction of its performers. Each goes all-in on the characters’ failings, neuroses and flashes of generosity."
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"It’s perfect — dreadful and hilarious — considering this brilliant, 95-minute, one-act tragicomedy takes place over three recent Illinois winters, all rushing toward the climate apocalypse."
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"By the end, we feel almost as though we're in a different play altogether as a character mysteriously disappears and we witness fantastical twists of plot that might have seemed ingenious on paper but that don't fare well onstage."
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For all the alarm on display, not much happens in Evanston Salt Costs Climbing. Arbery deserves credit for getting at the profoundly upsetting issue of ecological disaster, tying it to a more general sense that society is drifting, aimlessly, toward ruin. But his play ends up chasing its own tail, pursuing the same points repeatedly, to diminishing effect. By the time Jane Jr. once again asks, "Do you think there's something underneath everything that wants us to die?" the thought has lost its power to provoke. This, I suspect, is not what the playwright intends
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"In Will Arbery's strange and wonderful play 'Evanston Salt Costs Climbing,' the impending doom of climate change, economic precariousness, and urban decay are not merely abstract concerns.They are dark and stultifying forces that can make even time go out of whack."
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Will Arbery’s "Evanston Salt Costs Climbing" (set in the city in which the author received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in 2015) is a perplexing experience as it shifts from realism to absurdism to surrealism. Its worthy topic of ecology and climate change notwithstanding, the play’s repetitiousness and unprepared-for events are frustrating as well as the missing backstories. While it begins interestingly enough, it very quickly turns tedious and inexplicable. A noble experiment, "Evanston Salt Costs Climbing" is either for the select few or needs a rewrite or second draft.
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"There is anxiety, pressing against the rib cage, and grief that renders a body immobile, and the plain, dead weight of existential dread...these forces are lassoed into a lively and captivating 100 minutes of theater, even when time itself becomes unmoored."
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It adds up to an imaginative blend of workplace drama, climate-change allegory and existential plaint. Well, imaginative or exhaustingly offbeat—one’s perceptions may vary, and they might affect your appreciation for the play.
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