Star Tribune - Recommended

"...Playwright Donald Margulies picks away at these conflicting views in "Time Stands Still," which opened Friday at the Guthrie Theater. Mandy is a young idealist whose heart bleeds for those in peril. Her response to cruelty is to look away. Sarah risks her life to document the ugliness with her camera. We must bear witness, she believes, in order to build Mandy's beautiful world."
Read Full Review

Twin Cities Daily Planet - Somewhat Recommended

"...Director Joe Dowling's production is like Margulies's script: there's nothing really wrong with it, but taking more risks might have sparked the material into life. The scenes end abruptly, giving the sense of paging quickly through a novel that's failing to engage you but that you have to finish for book club. McCallum plays James as a puppy dog to Angew's fierce Sarah; it's a convincing picture of a lopsided relationship, but, maybe in part because of the Friends-like setting, their relationship feels as though it's come from a sitcom rather than a war."
Read Full Review

St. Paul Pioneer Press - Recommended

"...Mark Benninghofen's Richard does a better job of negotiating and articulating the tension between his character's conflicting desires. But it's Valeri Mudek - playing Richard's love interest, Mandy - who comes the closest to a truthful performance. Her character is an intellectual lightweight, but one with the knack for cutting through the self-importance of the other characters on stage, challenging their philosophical stances with questions and concerns much closer to tangible ground."
Read Full Review

How Was The Show - Somewhat Recommended

"...You would be hard-pressed to identify an actor with more power and presence, more pure luminosity, than the exquisite Sarah Agnew. But her Sarah Goodwin feels sour, off-putting, petty. Angry without a visionary counter-balance. Bill McCallum‘s Jamie is tame, harmless. As Richard, Mark Benninghofen delivers an amiable and benign performance – but not terribly interesting. Only Valeri Mudek, working with the tricky character of Mandy, does powerful and affecting work. These accomplished artists receive little help from director Joe Dowling, whose work on Time Stands Still is fitful and clunky (witness the self-conscious lighting shifts)."
Read Full Review

Aisle Say Twin Cities - Somewhat Recommended

"...Unfortunately the script flutters over these weighty questions like a butterfly hurrying to cover a large surface without dwelling on any one point. This is regrettable because there are many occasions for profound engagement with the dialogue. When James tells Sarah that he is inclined now to work on horror films because they represent “the new cinema of cruelty,” referring perhaps to Antonin Artaud’s theory of the Theater of Cruelty, why does he not expound on the significance of the relationship between our fascination with horror movies and our distance from the horrors of reality?"
Read Full Review