| "The performers handle their twisty syntax with sexy aplomb and assurance. If Levit's main objective is quirkily obscure, at least the experiment is richly imagined and charmingly executed."
- David Cote, Time Out New York, 20 August 2003. [ download a full review]
"...Levit asks as much from his actors as he does his audience - Campbell and Weiss split the work load, each anchoring the other in parts one and two. The two actors are bent and stretched across the stage in movement that is essential to the play's staging. Beyond their obvious range and skill, one is struck with the ease and natural way in which the actors handle the enormous amount of text, keeping time with the script's sometimes frantic pace while still allowing the audience to keep up and follow the action without having to backpedal. Live music provides a continuing thread that breaks up the action, allowing one to absorb the story before plowing back into the text. Levit's unaccompanied guitar work ranges from delicate acoustic strumming to discordant, chugging rhythms that enhance the text rather than show off the author's ax skills. "The Song of the Gun Metal Grey Cats" hints at Levit's perhaps untapped knack for writing sinister pop songs...."
- Jeremy Estes, Santa Fe Reporter, 29 September 2004
"... Writer/Director Donny Levit delivers a playful script that is purposefully precise (about details) and oblique (about what it all means), making real (and welcome) demands on the audience..."
- Jacki Demaline, The Cincinnati Enquirer, 18 February 2004
"How director Donald Levit could craft a show so finely and play the music is beyond comprehension."
- Tyler Schnoebelen, The Yale Daily News, 11 April 1997
"Donny uses the rehearsal space as a kind of laboratory for ideas. He is a collaborator. I have yet to see him dismiss an idea for a production - whether it turns up from the stage manager, actor, director, designer or assistant -- without examining it. Yet he maintains precise about the stories he wants to tell. Structurally, Donny's story telling has taken me to rust balls where burning is a way of life, to virgin nooks of South America, and, quite simply, to typical office spaces in Manhattan. Within these admirably explored locations exist theatrically interesting characters that are rounded because -- much like us -- they are not consistent. Characters that are plump with meaning in their need to find and peel down to a grittier, more truthful layer. Characters that, without fail, swell my imagination and challenge my physicality. He is talented, organized, imaginative and brave enough to risk combustion in the laboratory knowing that, in the end, it will yield the most effective tablet."
- Clara Pérez-Adamson, actor
"I know Donny Levit’s work as a director, a writer, and a teacher, and he?s quite a remarkable triple threat. He guided a world-class design team and a student cast at Dartmouth to a production of my play, Phaedra, which was in several important ways superior to my own production. He is an artist of vision."
- Matthew Maguire , playwright, director, visual artist, actor
"In the late 1960s, I first encountered the work of Merce Cunningham and John Cage. My entire way of seeing space and time was transformed. In just such a way has Donny Levit's work struck me. His is a precise vision of space and of movement through it. His actors respond to the peculiar mystery of his writing by giving performances that are astonishingly nuanced and yet stylized in an exacting manner as they move through this sharply envisioned world. The effect on the audience is visceral, thoughtful, metaverbal. I have also had the privilege to watch Donny work with student actors/directors, to whom he brings a full measure of his wit, curiosity, and demand. What bright pleasure and challenge Donny brings to his students, colleagues, and audiences."
- Marya Ursin, dancer and actor, Mystic Paper Beasts
"Donny Levit? I've worked with him. I'm an actor, over thirty years of it, British, RSC, and so on. We met through teaching theatre at NTI at The O'Neill Theater Center in Connecticut. Donny is challenging, enquiring, generous, and, for me, a breath of fresh air in the theatre. Our sense of humour may be an ocean apart - but then that makes for far more fun. Donny Levit? You have to give it to him: he's a stimulating colleague and he's easy to love as a friend. When's he going to offer me a job?"
- Michael Cadman, actor/playwright
"Donny has a confidence in his work that makes his focus and passion wonderfully contagious. He always creates an environment of honesty and integrity. As a director, Donny has an amazing ability to compose plays that are clean and powerful. As a writer, he is daring and captivating. As a teacher, he sets a very high bar and then offers the commitment and support to overcome it. As a person, Donny is authentic and compassionate. Creating with Donny never feels like work but rather like a gift."
- Kimberleigh Weiss, actor |
