“The young and imaginative Rorschach Theatre, adds an eerie theatricality to Hawthorne’s already dramatic 17th-century morality tale…

the staging grips you from the start. Pearl (Elizabeth Chomko) is lovely in a jagged-hemmed fairy’s dress of red and black. She emerges from a darkly lit “woods” of hanging tattered cloths. The story begins the day that Hester (Rahaleh Nassri), donning a gilded red A that she stitched herself, is sentenced. Pearl is only an infant then, but she remembers details from who was there to how her face reacted to its first exposure to the sun. As Pearl stands next to her mother on a Boston scaffold, Chomko fluidly shifts from mature-voiced narration to the subtle fussiness of a baby.
…Nathaniel Hawthorne may have always been engaging, but he’s never been this hip.”
-Washington Post (CLICK HERE for the full article)

“Rorschach embraces the theatricality of the approach with its usual flair for set,
costume and lighting design and performances of intelligence and style.”
– Potomac Stages

Rorschach Theatre creates a touching and relevant look at Puritanical values in its newest production, Phyllis Nagy’s adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. With a wonderfully child-like set, director Jenny McConnell Frederick and her cast have cut to the essence of Hawthorne’s classic story, whose heroin has become an icon about transforming pain into love and emerging from life’s hardships through sheer inner perseverance.

–Curtain Up (CLICK HERE for the full article)