“Powerful.… She brings a livid intensity to her characters that would shock if it were not fraught with devotion.”
—The Village Voice
“Courageous.… [Monster is] an album of voices demanding to be heard.… [Orlandersmith] has a journalist’s devotion to detachment and accuracy and a playwright’s love of showmanship and poetry.”
—The New York Times
“Stunning.… [The Gimmick] sparks and burns and rages like the anguished truth.… Orlandersmith leads us through a labyrinth of longing, hurt, wonder, and fury.… [She] balances sturdy storytelling with language that flows from the lush and impressionistic to the graphic and gritty.”
—The Seattle Times
“[The Gimmick’s] incantatory, repetitive language heightens the almost hallucinatory effect as she describes the lurid colors of life in the ghetto.… Driving its overflowing torrent of language is the desire to turn painful and ugly truth into something beautiful.”
—Daily Variety Gotham
“Beauty’s Daughter [is] a triumph … really wonderful.… [Orlandersmith] leaves an audience gasping, crying, cursing, cheering.”
—The Amsterdam News