Press Quotes
PART I: HARMLESS
“At first glance Brett Neveu’s new play looks like yet another ripped-from-the-headlines docudrama: a troubled college freshman submits a disturbingly violent first-person story to his fiction-writing class, consequently pitting an adjunct professor’s insistence on the student’s free-speech rights against the college president’s need to protect his institution’s reputation. (The story is based on a 2003 incident at San Francisco’s Academy of Art University.) But when the student turns out to be an Iraq war vet and a military criminal psychologist shows up to investigate the possibility of war crimes — among other things — HARMLESS becomes a Mametian cat-and-mouse game full of ethical ambiguities and sickening betrayals … an engrossing and harrowing ride.” —Justin Hayford, Chicago Reader
“A powerful jolt to one’s head.” —Chicago Tribune
PART II: WEAPON OF MASS IMPACT
“Anxiety courses quietly throughout WEAPON OF MASS IMPACT, but not so quietly that it won’t haunt you indefinitely.” —Time Out Chicago
“… [a] thoroughly compelling new play … You come to see that we’re probing the definition of terrorism here. You get the sense that [Neveu] is observing that the traumas of our individual lives can impart just as much individual misery as those mysteriously absent weapons of mass destruction that preoccupy governments of all shades … for those of us who’ve deeply admired his writing from the start, it’s a very powerful reminder …” —Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune
PART III: OLD GLORY
“Neveau’s latest is a murder investigation, similarly filled with subterranean currents of subtext beneath vividly colloquial dialogues … The murder in OLD GLORY occurs in Fallujah where — never mind the war — two American GIs who share a barracks drive each other to paroxysms of mutual loathing. (So no, Gertrude, this is not really a play about the war but about the homefront) … The latent violence simmering between the soldiers — one a devotee of graphic novels, the other of real novels — speaks head-on to why the United States can’t seem to generate a reasonable discourse with herself about anything that actually matters. The isolation of the three scenic compartments underscores that point … Like [Neveu’s] AMERICAN DEAD, it’s a penetratingly written rumination, a lament even, for something indescribable that’s been lost in this country — and to this country.” —Steven Leigh Morris, L A Weekly
“Haunting, intimate and intensely moving.” —Chicago Tribune