Shadowmen
Trapdoor Theatre
Chicago, IL
October 2008- November 2008
Director Scott McKinsey
Scene, Lighting, & Sound Design: Scott McKinsey and Dave Sweeny
Costume Design: Lauren Yearsich and Jordan Kohl


The Shadowmen make their debut with this intermittently interesting but far too cautious revival of Doug Wright’s study of the Marquis de Sade’s last days at the Charenton asylum. There are plenty of reasons to re-examine Wright’s central concern—what kind of control, if any, should the state exert over the troubling speech of its citizens? The show gets off to a slow start, and the dramatic stakes in Scott McKinsey’s production don’t build as inexorably as they should, though it is markedly better in the second act than the first.
Kerry Reid, The Chicago Tribune
October 24, 2008

Doug Wright's 1995 play about the Marquis de Sade's final days, spent in a crumbling insane asylum where an authoritarian doctor and a compassionate priest conspire to quash his degeneracy, has only one point to make: those devoted to stamping out violence and indecency invariably resort to the very tactics they condemn. But Wright explores his one issue with enough subtlety and ingenuity to generate two compelling hours of theater--before squandering his final 30 minutes on a lot of obvious, facile conclusions. Director Scott McKinsey's bare-bones Shadowmen production looks like it was thrown up with stuff someone found in the alley, but the leads in this mostly satisfying show tell Wright's story with passion and intelligence.
Justin Hayford, Chicago Reader
http://events.chicagoreader.com/events/Event?oid=856929