Chicago Tribune - Recommended
"..."The Thanksgiving Play" is, for the most part, a satire of progressive white America, especially the nonprofit world of "holding space," "lifting up," "checking my privilege" "allyship" and other such nomenclature where creative, grant-dependent white people try and do all the right political things except get out of the way themselves."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...A satire of wacky wokeness, Larissa FastHorse's "The Thanksgiving Play" cleverly depicts the efforts of a few well-meaning but self-interested white people to "devise" a politically correct Turkey Day pageant for an elementary school audience that lifts up, gives voice to, or makes space for the Native American point of view."
Daily Herald - Highly Recommended
"...In less capable hands, these well-spoofed champions of representation of marginalized people would have been merely virtue signaling buffoons. But the earnest performances by McLeod’s cast reveal them to be people who are trying their best and failing spectacularly. We smirk, as FastHorse intends. But never do we doubt their sincerity."
Chicago Reader - Recommended
"...The show plays out with manic energy in the in-the-round setting, which occasionally made me feel like I was watching a Brechtian take on No Exit crossed with The Breakfast Club. If that sounds bizarre, it’s no more so than what FastHorse’s play is really getting at: trying to tell stories about Indigenous people rather than simply ceding back time and territory to them to tell their own stories is a fool’s errand. The quartet of fools in The Thanksgiving Play deliver that message with breakneck gusto and guts."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Highly Recommended
"...If you've ever found yourself feeling smug because you live in a "Blue State," Larissa
FastHorse's satirical "The Thanksgiving Play" has arrived in Chicago to take you down a peg.
Focused on four amateur thespians attempting to devise a historically accurate, culturally
sensitive school play about the first Thanksgiving, the Steppenwolf preview audience tittered
throughout the 90-minute skewering of white progressive values."
Around The Town Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...Here we are, just starting the merry month of May, and one of our theater companies is ready to do holiday programming. Yes! If you attend the Ensemble Theatre at Steppenwolf, you will be treated to a rollicking time as four actors take you to a new way to look at Thanksgiving in "The Thanksgiving Play" a new work by Larissa FastHorse , making its Chicago premiere. It is the story of four well intentioned people ( with a theater background of some type) trying to bring a new Thanksgiving play to grammar school classes, that will not "ruffle any feathers", so to speak."
Chicago Theatre Review - Highly Recommended
"...This funny and unusually shocking production, much like Steppenwolf Theatre's recent POTUS, is a play that will stick with theatergoers long after the final curtain call. Playwright Larissa FastHorse has written a tantalizing little one-act play that sheds new light on what it means to be Woke, or politically correct. And she's absolutely correct when describing her 2015 work as being "a comedy within a satire." Patrons will laugh until they're hoarse at the antics of the four would-be theatre artists, while Ms. FastHorse humorously examines the lengths to which Americans today will strive to become aware, evolved, conscious, inclusive and politically correct. And I guarantee audiences will remember this play the next time they're stuffing their Butterball turkey."
Buzznews.net - Highly Recommended
"...The Thanksgiving Play’ is not a show for the humorless. It’s a blistering send-up of how bleeding-heart white people can find themselves twisted in knots trying to appease political correctness, and at what cost."
Third Coast Review - Somewhat Recommended
"...The American theater business and society in general offer plenty of opportunity for criticism of "wokeness" and efforts to satisfy all sides-both in the arts, in other nonprofits and in business. The Thanksgiving Play now on stage at Steppenwolf Theatre tries to tell one of these stories-about the violent history of our treatment of Native Americans-as a satire, laden with silliness. But satire needs more wit and less slapstick humor Although The Thanksgiving Play offers plenty of laughs, the play does not succeed as satire."
Chicago On Stage - Highly Recommended
"...Directed by Jess McLeod, FastHorse's play takes us to one of those primary school gyms, in which a beleaguered director named Logan (Audrey Francis) is trying to save her job by creating a new Thanksgiving Play to celebrate Native American month. Logan is a parody all by herself: she's sincere, but she is also so much a product of the post-George Floyd liberal educational universe that she feels an almost desperate need to be unoffensive. Along with her lover, a street performer named Jaxton (Nate Santana), and a 4th-grade history teacher named Caden (Tim Hopper), Logan wants to make a show that will both entertain and instruct...as long as it doesn't tread on anyone's toes."
Chicago Culture Authority - Somewhat Recommended
"...Ultimately, The Thanksgiving Play proves as exhausting as hearing a kid practice the same guitar chord again and again. Pretty soon, you just want to peace out and maybe check back in again when they've learned a full song."
Splash Magazine - Highly Recommended
"...The production is wrought with the amazing, detailed stagecraft and the supportive theatrical abundance that propels Steppenwolf into the top tier of theatre. Even before the play begins, weird Thanksgiving hymnlike dirges are keening in the atmosphere. When the cast appears, before the real action, a self-mocking, audacious adaptation of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" is sung while iconic quasi relevant relics (teepees, moccasins) are trundled onto the set."
BroadwayWorld - Recommended
"...It’s easy to laugh (and wince) at THE THANKSGIVING PLAY, even as it dives into complex questions about identity, representation, and how, exactly, we can reconcile the celebration of Thanksgiving with its complicated, violent history. Directed by Jess McLeod, the cast finds the fun — and the cringe — inherent in FastHorse’s text."
NewCity Chicago - Somewhat Recommended
"...It’s a darkly funny play, punctuated by goofy musical parodies, including a cheerfully deranged opening number—“The Twelve Days of Thanksgiving”—sung by a smiling Pilgrim wearing glow-in-the-dark sneakers. There’s also a startling moment of Tarantinoesque gruesomeness, adverting to the very real violence underlying Native American-settler history. The comic form never meshes with the somber subtext, and the play as a whole has a tricky, ambiguous, vaguely disturbing quality, forcing viewers to do the interpretive work and explore their own feelings about what they’ve been watching."