Elizabeth Bruce
What Theatre Critics Have Said…
At Washington, D.C.’s Sanctuary Theatre, Inc.
About Rupert’s Birthday
by Kentucky playwright Ken Jenkins
“Elizabeth Bruce closes the evening with a wonderfully warm and moving monologue…that reaches back into the memory of a middle-aged eccentric to…when…she transformed from girl to woman. It is a fine, strong performance of a delicate memory piece.”
John Michael Sophos
The Washington Blade
About An Evening with Chekhov and Gorky
by Polish playwright Thaddeus Wittlin
“Elizabeth Bruce is wonderfully comedic as the delicate, unfaithful aristrocrat’s wife…especially…in her lip sync rendition of a Russian Ballad.”
Regina Moore
The New Observer
About Bag Lady…
by New York playwright Jean-Claude van Itallie
“Elizabeth Bruce’s furious performance as Clara is phenomenal. She works herself into a captivating, breathless fury.”
Randy Shulman
The Hill Rag
“Sanctuary Founder Elizabeth Bruce is startling convincing in the part, as Clara shuttles rapidly between clarity and incoherence.”
Joe Brown
The Washington Post
“Bag Lady…focuses on Clara, the confused, angry, prideful and pathetic title character. Her speech is sometimes lucid, sometimes hallucinatory. Some of what she tells us of her life is believable, some of it obvious fantasy. We learn about her unhappy childhood and an attempted rape as a teenager, the hospitals that felt to her like prisons, the gradual descent into alcoholism…he playwright wishes us to see the human being underneath the old clothes and the fantastical ramblings, the misunderstood and underloved child pressured by her parents to meet expectations that didn’t suit her. The more anger she expressed, the more her parents, and eventually the courts and the hospitals, tried to control her. The end result is a ground down soul, no longer a threat, just a social problem, a nuisance…Elizabeth Bruce manages the difficult acting task here quite admirably.”
Larry B. Puchall
The InTowner
About Win/Lose/Draw
by U.S. playwrights Ara Watson and Mary Gallagher
“Sanctuary wins three in a row….Sanctuary founder Elizabeth Bruce is distressingly convincing as the disheveled, bitter mother who lashes out with violence in her ignorance.”
Joe Brown
The Washington Post
About Verdict of the Wave at UC Denver Theater
by New York playwright Alex Stoll
“Carla and her lover, Camilla…expertly played by Elizabeth Bruce…the actors have thrown the fervor of a crusade into their performances.”
Jackie Campbell
Rocky Mountain News
Stuck Inside of Lubbock at Denver’s Slightly Off Center Theatre
by New York playwright John Kaplan
“Stuck Inside of Lubbock is worth seeing, not for the band, but for the excellent perfomance of Elizabeth Bruce, who plays—with ease and spontaneity—a troubled but witty middle-aged mother, Natalie Malick, who is unable to cope with the trivial problems of modern life…Bruce’s portrayal clearly ranks her among the better actresses working in Denver.”
E.T. McClanahan
The Colorado Daily
“Lubbock becomes very decidedly a play about Natalie…played with violent, wrenching spasms of humor and grief by Elizabeth Bruce….[She] epitomizes the too tightly wound woman unraveling.”
Barbara MacKay
The Denver Post
About Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" at Denver’s Rivertree Theatre
by Edward Albee
“His wife, Honey, is played by Elizabeth Bruce, who provides welcome contrast to the other players. Hers is a legitimate innocence, an honest simplicity which never breaks down. As the others grow increasingly bizarre, increasingly cruel, she merely becomes more and more confused…But Ms. Bruce isn’t a simpering, dumb Honey, a character to be dismissed or ignored. She is funny in her confusion, keeping a balance between the humor and the pathos in the role, providing a dead weight, a control against the ugliness which keeps expanding until it seems the room and everyone in it will explode.”
Barbara MacKay
The Denver Post
About Our Town at Denver’s Rivertree Theatre
By Thorton Wilder
“The only regret is that Wilder didn’t expand the role of Mrs. Soames so we could have heard more or Elizabeth Bruce’s fluent jabberings and hushed gossiping.”
Sherri Langton
Spree
About Ah, Wildernessat Denver’s Theatre Under Glass
By Eugene O’Neill
“The two outstanding performances of the evening are given by Louis DePaemelere and Elizabeth Bruce as Uncle Sid and Aunt Lily…Bruce and DePaemelere work very well together. She gives a well-considered portrayal of a stern, silly, and very human woman.”
Dennis and Erica Stull
Straight Creek Journal
About Costume Design:
Derek Walcott’s Folk Fable, Ti-Jean and His Brothers, gets a physically impressive treatment from Sanctuary Theatre…..it is a minor miracle that they could mount such an elaborately gorgeous production. Jack Guidone’s exotic masks, Elizabeth Bruce’s stunning costumes, and Michael Oliver’s lush tropical setting are brilliantly imaginative artistic accomplishments.”
Randy Shulman
The Hill Rag
“A couple of things were outstandingly right…the gorgeous costumes by Elizabeth Bruce, with Masks by Jack Guidone. Ms. Bruce creates several forst creatures—a giant frog, a firefly, and some demons that are wroth the price of admission all by themselves.”
Tony Perkins
The Critics’ Place,
Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting |
