Goodness Press
Times Colonist, Vancouver
CVV MAGAZINE, VANCOUVER
“A challenging and memorable production…Goodness breathes new life into the morality play. Wonderfully complex direction.
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“Funny and tragic and sympathetic and sickening.”
Backstage, New York City
Vancouver Weekly, Vancouver
“Subjects of war and genocide combined with the theatrical make for a production that leaves a lasting impression. It is easy to forget that you are watching a performance”
“All the questions asked by the playwright and director Ross Manson ring true… Coupled with the cast’s easy theatricality, Redhill’s Goodness is intriguing and memorable.”
The Toronto Sun, Toronto
The Toronto Star, Toronto
“Smoulderingly intense
Gut-wrenchingly convincing
You won’t find it easy to forget”
“Goodness reigns supreme
A play about genocide brought to dizzying new heights with tremendous cast and inspired direction
It is a work that demands to be seen.”
Mooney on Theatre, Toronto
The National Post, Toronto
“Powerful
Superb
The personal and political… collide and explode”
“The perfect balance is kept and the work is seemless.
A marvel to watch.
If you want a moving piece of theatre, go see it”
The Toronto Sun, Toronto
“Our morality is most often painted in stark shades of black and white, while our lives most often are lived in shades of grey. It takes a huge act of faith or intellect to draw the two together. They do come together briefly and powerfully in Goodness … In a careful alliance between the playwright and director Ross Manson, the genocide in question becomes not a single event, but instead embraces most of the killing sprees that have horrified our modern age … highly effective”
Eye Weekly, Toronto
NOW Magazine, Toronto
“A riveting, tense, unflinching production … It’s a thrilling piece of theatre, raising issues you’ll be debating long after you’ve left the Tarragon.”
“Incisive direction and committed performances… Goodness radically undermines commonly held beliefs that only good people suffer and that suffering brings knowledge.”
The Herald, Edinburgh
The Independent, Edinburgh
“In a time-shifting tangle of tales-within-tales, Michael Redhill’s Goodness explores, in the most intriguing way, the knotty question of why good people carry out the most evil crimes… This explosive play, its European premiere presented by Canada’s enterprising Volcano theatre, has genuine emotional texture, is rich in complexity, quirkiness and surprise, and not without brief shafts of wit… I doubt if there will be a more gripping theatrical experience than Goodness at Edinburgh this year.”
“Searingly intense… a near Pirandellian inquiry into the nature of truth, fiction, speculation and imagined history… Knitted together via a series of role-playing flashbacks by a six-strong ensemble, and with some spine-tingling choral singing derived from South Africa and Eastern Europe, a serious and profound rumination on the weight of moral responsibility in an unjust world goes beyond good and evil to get its man.”
The Scotsman, Edinburgh
“This complex piece of fractured storytelling has some terrific… qualities, including a series of beautifully orchestrated performances from its six-strong cast, an inspired, light-touch use of traditional sung laments from Africa and central Europe, and an eloquent, free-flowing abstract production by Ross Manson. Above all, the show avoids the kind of easy cynicism that would have left Michael, as the classic naive liberal hero, silenced by horror. He remains articulate to the end, still defending his position with energy and wit; and when the cast turn to the audience with a final challenging stare that asks how we would respond in the kind of situation that leads to genocide, it’s a mark of this show’s courage and its resistance to fashionable pessimism, that it leaves the question feeling genuinely open.”