Adam Langer, Chicago Reader November 15, 1996

"This campy, gender-bending gothic spoof is effective enough as a showcase for the versatile Lookingglass crew. Writer-director Bruce Norris displays an uncanny ability to segue from highly literate period melodrama to innuendo-laden Charles Ludlam-meets-Rocky Horror deconstruction. And the script provides the cast ample opportunities to show off their skill at acrobatics, clowning, and mummery as well as garden-variety classical acting while also creating the potential for stunning stage imagery, the company's trademark. The plot has its charming flourishes. A prudish governess discovers the horrifying secrets of a familiar gallery of ghoulish grotesques: the wheelchair-bound master and his animal-torturing son, sickly daughter, mute hunchbacked servant, and menacing housekeeper, who's right out of Daphne DuMaurier. Christine Dunford sparkles in the dual role of ethereal trapeze artist and majestic countess, and Raymond Fox is hilarious as the governess. Indeed, Norris's complicated script thrills at first, with its intelligent wordplay and obsession with doppelgangers, echoing both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Italo Calvino's The Cloven Viscount."


Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune November 12, 1996

In the theater, too much talent articulating too many ideas can be a curse. The Lookingglass Theatre Company seems increasingly locked in that curse's grip.

The troupe's current production, an inventive but unwieldy Bruce Norris comic concoction titled "The Vanishing Twin," is a classic example of a show with such an embarrassment of theatrical riches that it becomes overwhelmed by its own content.

Some of the time, this company-devised piece of Gothic satire plays like a sparkling piece of Charles Ludlum camp. Taking a cue from "Jane Eyre," the daft story follows a Victorian governess who finds herself assigned to a weird Germanic mansion filled with loonies, including a blind woman, a mute and a pair of nastily separated Siamese twins. In classic "Mystery of Irma Vep" fashion, gender-bending performers deliver droll one-liners with deadpan panache.

Then there's the side of the show that wants to be "Rocky Horror" for people too sophisticated for the Time Warp. Every so often, characters pick up guitars and launch into original rock songs.

A couple of these melodic tunes (penned by Norris, company members and guitarist Rick Sims) are genuinely impressive, but they are barely staged and have little connection to the rest of the show. For much of the second act, the music disappears.

Ever physically adroit, the Lookingglass crew enjoys demonstrating its circus skills, so the show features a trapeze routine and other corporal high jinks. And this company made its name through theatricalized storytelling, so that also enters the mix.

Late in the evening, each character takes a turn center stage, describing his or her sordid past. Finally, Norris cannot resist Caryl Churchill-esque comedic social commentary, so the show lampoons racism, economic policy and corporal punishment.

Taken individually, much of this stuff is splendid. Norris' typically intellectual dialogue sparkles with linguistic wit.

Be they in or out of drag, all of the performers are highly accomplished (Raymond Fox as the spinsterish governess and David Kersnar as the Mrs. Danvers-like maid are standouts).

And Dan Ostling's sharply raked setting adds to the fun with many scenic tricks.

But one night of theater (even Lookingglass theater) cannot do everything, and sometimes decent ideas need to be thrown away, lest they obscure better ones.

The more "The Vanishing Twin" showcases its supremely talented and multivalent creators, the less the audience understands what else this long show was supposed to achieve.?