Reviews

 The Lucky Star (formerly The Book of Joseph)

Resonates in the current moment with overpowering force. The relevance of this story, portrayed without sentimentality, couldn’t be more potent."
-Steven Oxman, Variety | Full Review

"Unlike any Holocaust play you will have seen, because it is so clearly concerned with what we do about all of this now." Four out of Four Stars
-Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune | Full Review

"The Book of Joseph challenges America’s heart and soul, specifically our willingness to shelter the downtrodden, 77 years ago or tomorrow." 
-Lawrence Bommer, Stage and Cinema | Full Review

“The fact that this country (not for the first time) is dealing with profound and varied questions about refugees and immigrants only underscores the relevance of “Joseph.”
-Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun Times | Full Review

"You might lose count of how many times a chill runs down your spine."
- Alex Hunsterberger, Time Out Chicago | Read Full Review

"Go see this beautiful, topical production." 
-Adelaide Lee, Theatremania | Full Review

"A rich, multilayered play." 
​-Jack Helbig, Chicago Reader | Full Review

"A ‘must see’ work." -Tom Williams, Chicago Critic | Full Review

"Passionate, relevant storytelling. Activists of all ages should witness this living, breathing symbol of why we can learn from history."
​-Mary Beth Euker, Northwest Herald | Full Review
Project Dawn

"One of the very best productions of the season. It’s a big moment as play and as theatrical entertainment."
-Philadelphia Inquirer | Full Review 

"Powerful, heart-rending, often slyly funny, and serendipitously timely."
-Broadway World  | Full Review 

"'Project Dawn' is an artistic achievement that lights a way forward to a more empathetic justice system."
-Delaware County News Review | Full Review
Audio Feature | Prostitutes Aren't So Different from Prosecutors
-CJ Janovy, KCUR
Audio Feature |"Project Dawn" brings reality-based drama to Malvern 
-Peter Crimmins, newsworks.org 

Features

Videos

American Theater Wing's Working in the Theater: "The Characters Start Talking." ​
Backstage Pass: Notes from the production of Goldie, Max & Milk at Florida Stage.

Reviews (cont'd)

Roz and Ray
​
"A searing new play. Moves fast and is unafraid of political force."
-Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune | Full Review 

​"Brilliantly captures the confusion, and the moral ambiguity, about life on the edge of biomedicine."
-Luke Timmerman, Forbes | Full Review

"Roz and Ray commands your attention. Hartman has captured a world of injustice in the drama, and in her characters, a pair of mighty warriors."
-Catey Sullivan, Chicago Theatre Beat | Full Review

"If you see one play in the  next few weeks, make it Roz and Ray. Brilliant story. Highly Recommend."
-Alan Bresloff, Around the Town Chicago | Full Review

"Go see Roz and Ray!"
-Rich Smith, Seattle Stranger | Full Review

"...accomplishes what the best dramas do: smacks us in the face with important history by taking us inside the decisions of those who are living it.
​-Stephen Hegg, KCTS9 | Full Review

​Watch Video: Audience Responses from Victory Gardens Production
Goldie, Max & Milk

Jewish in Seattle |  Feature on Karen's work as Senior-Artist-in-Residence 

Goldie, Max, and Milk at Florida Stage
Broward Palm Beach New Times | Full Review

“Hartman's smart-crazy dialogue elicits a constant low roar of happy laughter from the audience, the eruption of which does not abate till a ways into the second act... The point of Goldie, Max, and Milk isn't that the liberal atheists or the tradition cleaving 
​conservatives have all the answers. It's that the answers won't mean anything if we can't talk to each other.” 
Goldie, Max, and Milk at Florida Stage
Florida Theatre On Stage |  Full Review

"Hartman skillfully creates a sturdy architecture for the evening and peoples it with delightfully quirky complex characters who teeter close to Cartoonland, but never fall over the edge. But it’s her language and the ideas she investigates that elevate the work to the level of something well worth seeing....Without ever spelling it out, Hartman uses milk as a metaphor that goes beyond nourishment for the child’s body. It is the nourishment of love, acceptance and newfound maturity for the soul of its mother and the untraditional extended family that evolves to support her."
Leah's Train

“Leah’s Train,” is about family and the importance of cherishing life and connections.  It has comedy, it has meaning and it’s quite touching....When Leah’s pain, vulnerability and literalness meet Ruth’s tart modern tirade, a wall breaks down.  And the vast difference in the worlds in which these two grew up smacks us in the face.”
-Anita Gates, NY Times
“Leah's Train is such a brilliantly surprising play, layered and dense and magical like a Russian Kachina doll. Playwright Karen Hartman does a masterful job juxtaposing the world of 1913 with the world of today on this single magical train, illustrating the strengthening and deepening bonds of a mother and daughter who embark on a journey that they never meant to take.”
-Martin Denton, nytheatre.com
"Stories of today and stories of 100 years ago happen concurrently, but through Hartman's artful writing and Jean Randich's equally artful direction, all is clear."
-​Ronni Reich, Backstage
"The stark and lean Leah's Train is psychologically astute, historically informative and the right shade of mystical.  ​"
-Christopher Arnott, New Haven Advocate
Gum

​"A beguiling, sensual, witty, impassioned, deeply moving and brightly burnished gem."
-San Francisco Examiner

“A sexy, sharp one-act...laced with a lightness that pokes as much fun at Western commercialization as it does at Middle Eastern orthodoxy.”
-The New Yorker

“Transcends its political agenda to create a lyrical fable about sex, love, danger and virtue.”
-New York Newsday
Girl Under Grain

​Winner
-Best Drama, 2000 New York International Fringe Festival

“Girl Under Grain emerges out of Fringe NYC, for this reviewer, as an oasis in the midst of parched land... The weary traveler plops down in the shade of Hartman’s cool prose and drinks in the sweet nourishment of this story of love, betrayal, and forgiveness.  Yes, it’s the real thing.”
​-Fringe NYC Reviews
​
“Heartbreaking, and stunning, and hopeful all at once...
-Theatre Reviews Limited
ALICE: Tales of a Curious Girl

AT&T OnStage Award
-1999

"What’s so engaging about Hartman’s Alice is the Carroll-ian playfulness and sweetly compelling thoughtfulness she’s applied to the task.  Curiosity is its own reward.  And ours."
​-San Francisco Examiner

"By the time it reaches its tender, mysterious, and riveting conclusion, (this) strange new Alice has burrowed not only under the earth, but under the skin."
-Dallas Morning News
Troy Women
​
"There were sharp wonders in the text.  Hartman has found a new flow in the words of the distraught prisoners of this terrible war."
-New Haven Advocate ​