In The Glass Menagerie:
Long Wharf Theatre Production
"when Laura begins to bloom in the presence of Jim, Ms. Keeley’s hunted, furtive look dissolves, and a beaming young girl emerges in the flickering candlelight.
The process is deeply touching."
"Keeley has the required fragility for Laura and even displays hints at a deeper psychosis beyond merely being "terribly shy." Her tentative blooming in the scene with "gentleman caller" Jim (Josh Charles) is heartwarming and ultimately heartbreaking."
-- Variety"Keira Keeley's Laura captures the wounded bird fragility wonderfully but you also see glimmers of possibility as well. It's heartbreaking to see her almost-bloom and then wither in that final scene amid the haze of candlelight."
-- Hartford Courant"Most productions turn Laura into a grotesque object of abject pity, a delusion hermit who is suckered by the slightest show of sympathy from a polite visitor….but Keira Keeley brilliantly underplays Laura, making her decent and genuine and never freakish."
-- New Haven Advocate"Keira Keeley’s Laura, evoked with particularly powerful physicality"
"The chemistry of the ensemble…makes for a splendid evening in the theater"
"sister Laura (the concomitantly fragile Keira Keeley)"
"Keeley has the broken body language down"
-- TheaterMania
"superb"
"newcomer Keira Keeley has a movingly inchoate quality as his deskmate, Daphne."
"remarkably good""The acting is consistently excellent"
-- CurtainUp
In Departures:
"Travis York and Keira Keeley already have
perfect chemistry with each other,
and the show works so tragically well by keeping a slow, natural pace
that leaves the ending up to the audience.
I strongly recommend it"
"[Keeley] is emotionally evasive"
"Keeley and York…pull off their characters'various transfers of neediness and power"
"We learn as much from watching Keeley and York's faces —
or from the set of their shoulders, from the tiniest physical details —
as they react to each other's barbs, as we do from what they say."
""Both Keira Keeley and Travis York give
performances of extraordinary focus and intensity,
which only ups the tension for us."
In Local Story:
"Keira Keeley [makes] perfect sense
of poetry"
"The most haunted of the bunch is
Keira Keeley’s Betsy,
a wispy willow of a woman"
"Keeley — who suggests a more pretty,
less annoying Juliette Lewis —
doesn’t just play her part;
she absorbs it into her physicality."
"Keeley’s heartbreaking facial expressions, spastic skipping and lilting voice elevate a beautifully written role to
a level of transcendence that lingers after the lights have been extinguished."
"cast of seven perfectly suited
for their roles"
"Keira Keeley as the fey and
fertile returnee"
"wholly satisfying"
-- Backstage
"Keira Keeley gives perhaps
the most fascinating performance
in Local Story because she
comes across
with such a
compellingly ethereal quality."
-- NYtheatre.com
In The Young Left:
"Keira Keeley nails the part of a self-serving, sexualized activist so successfully
that it seems she has been plucked straight from the WTO frontlines
and plopped on stage."
