The Midwest premiere of Matei Visniec's "Horses at the Window", directed by critically acclaimed director Radu-Alexandru Nica at Trap Door Theatre in Chicago received welcoming reviews from the Chicago press. Please find below a selection of these articles.

• TimeOut Chicago, March 26, 2009: Horses at the Window, by Kris Vire
  "The truism that War Changes Men is nothing new. Stories of soldiers’ difficulties readjusting to civilian life are popular fare in American culture, from The Best Years of Our Lives to The Deer Hunter. In Romanian playwright Visniec’s avant-garde take, though, the concept finds both fresh life and a chilling universality.”
  "Director Nica, a fellow Romanian, gives Horses an astoundingly creative, evocative staging. Freewheeling but deceptively precise, Nica’s remarkably physical production—as much a dance piece as a play—teeters gleefully on the edge of extravagance. His six cast members commit thoroughly and admirably to the reality of their surreality. In a play full-to-bursting with striking visual metaphors, the pas de trois among Kahara, Thomas and a cello is first among equals."
  
  
• Chicago Reader, March 26, 2009: The Endless Loop, by Tony Adler
  "Matei Visniec is part of an exotic lineage: the Romanian-born French theatrical absurdists who include Dada performance artist Tristan Tzara, The Bald Soprano author Eugene Ionesco, and . . . well, as far as I know, that’s it. (…) Judging by the 1992 Horses at the Window, now receiving a wild production from Trap Door Theatre, Visniec has more than geography and genre in common with his fellow RBFTAs. His script picks up on Ionesco’s circular sense of reality, Tzara’s arbitrary but resonant gestures, and their shared comic rage."
  
  
• Chicagocritic.com, March 19, 2009: When War Becomes a Way of Life, by Randy Hardwick
  "Matei Vişniec’s absurdist tale of hyper-patriotism gets a fresh new look in director Radu-Alexandru Nica’s stylish new staging now playing at Trap Door Theatre. Told in three successive scenes of women sending their men off to war, Horses at the Window explores the insanity created when war is constant and no one remembers life without it."
  
  
• NewCity Stage, March 30, 2009: Review: Horses at the Window/Trap Door Theatre, by Fabrizio O. Almeida
  "Challenging and fringelike—as well as provoking and disorienting—are just a few adjectives to describe Trap Door’s latest offering, “Horses at the Window,” by exiled Romanian playwright Matei Visniec."
  "Just like “Horses at the Window” does so many times throughout the evening—psychologically at least—yet always balancing that fine line between spectacle and substance, realism and abstraction."
  "And depending upon your familiarity with the avant-garde, maybe it will be “love at first sight."
  
  
• Chicago Stage Review, April 8, 2009: Review: Horses at the Window, by Venus Zarris
  "Once again Trap Door Theatre so completely suspends conventional reality that we are drawn in, as if falling through a psychological wormhole of exaggerated sensibilities, and then left reeling as we re-enter the real world."
  "Director Radu Alexandru-Nica delivers this script with a thrilling physicality that borders on exhausting to watch, which must mean exhausting to execute, and an intimately clear vision of Visinec’s obscure approach. Every scene is precisely choreographed madness with a striking purpose. It is fluid and concentrated lunacy. The result is an assaulting and entertaining adventure into the world of bureaucratic double-talk and propagandized lives."
  "The exceptional cast embodies the stylized characters with insane intensity, profound dedication and focused precision. All are remarkable in their own right but the women carry the weight of contemplative loss."
  
  
• Chicago Free Press, April 9, 2009: Review: Horses at the Window, by Brian Kirst
  "Described as a comedic ballet, an absurdist look at naïve nationalism and a playful examination of the relationship between bravery and stupidity, Trap Door Theatre's eclectic presentation of Horses in the Window definitely pays exclusive tribute to all three wildly different definitions.
  "Romanian guest director Radu Alexandru-Nica definitely lives up to his described style of 'new realism'. He truly encourages the cast to find the truth in even the most bizarre and unwieldy moments in Visniec’s text. Under his direction, the actors’ innate physicality, circus-like athletics and natural musicality all come to the fore."