-Ben Brantley, New York Times

THE REVIEWS

Port Authority is well worth a trip to The Writer’s Center in Bethesda for its stellar writing and three strong, complex performances from Flanagan, Beall, and LaRocque. This story of love, loss, and the life unlived is theater at its most captivating. -- Ben Demers, DC Theatre Scene |  read the full review

.It takes a particular kind of actor to handle a McPherson role.  Three of "that kind of actor" make up the cast here. First up is James Flanagan, who seems to select serious scripts but who always finds the light touch to bring his characters to life (as was so clear when he was the pizza delivery boy who shakes up the world of a computer wiz in The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow at Studio or the teenage crush of Kimberly Akimbo at Rep Stage a few years ago). Here he's the youth side of the trio and he finds just the right touch of remaining hope to create the age-based contrast with the older characters. Steve Beall is the solid center of the group with a surface veneer of savior faire that belies the damage of drink, marital mismatch and a dead-end career but lets us see the pain nonetheless. LaRocque is back for another crack at the trademark quotidian approach to monologue with his tiny gestures that almost (but not quite) escape notice but which do so much to establish mood and express the truths otherwise hidden in the words. -- Brad Hathaway, Potomac Stages |  read the full review

..Quotidian's small but mighty production very well done. ...it's a credit to McPherson's humane, observant pen -- and to the three adept actors who illuminate his material in Quotidian Theatre's local premiere of his 2001 play -- that even when nothing much is happening, it feels like everything's at stake. ...the epiphanies here are like atoms, miraculous for their smallness and ubiquity. McPherson knows that insight is more likely to arrive in the frozen food aisle than on a mountaintop, and that wherever we are, we experience these shattering moments privately. ...McPherson's work has been all over D.C. stages recently. Scena's production of his "Dublin Carol" closed last month, while Studio staged "The Seafarer" last January and "Shining City" 14 months before that. Quotidian did its own "Dublin Carol" only a year ago. Given all that, it's surprising that "Port Authority" took so long to find its way here. That's its arrived in such lovingly curated, brilliantly performed fashion is the one happy ending amid a show that otherwise has no use for such dismissive reductionism. -- Chris Klimek, DC Examiner |  read the full review