“She tells him that small dreams matter too, like someone asking her if his blue suit is pressed. Like, she says, her voice breaking, the word ‘husband.’ Magrath quietly rips your heart into your mouth.”
“[Magrath and Macdonald] have a natural onstage chemistry, and much of the humor throughout the play is based on their tête-à-tête. Magrath plays a sassy, magnetizing Amanda...”
“Magrath is beautifully restrained as the white girl in a tempestuous mix....The acting is boldly flavorful and compelling...the well defined cast exhibits cunning insight.”
“‘The Ice-Breaker’ features two strong, yet nuanced, characters who deserve our undivided attention. On stage, Magrath seems like a real human being. She is propelled by Sonia’s endless hot air, which is sometimes a bluster, other times a breeze.”
“Sonia (Monette Magrath) bursts into Lawrence’s world like a miniature hurricane. Magrath conveys Sonia’s quirky charms, and she lets us see enough of her character’s underlying ambition that Sonia’s more selfish actions are plausible, if not likeable.”
“Sensitively and beautifully performed by its two actors…believably true to life. It is almost literally a dance as the two characters venture toward and back away from each other. Magrath impressively delivers science-jargon-laden phrases in giddy torrents.”
“As Amanda, Monette Magrath is a first-class lounger with a collection of silk underthings, a hair-trigger temper and a willingness to crack a phonograph record or two over Elyot’s skull. Magrath whipsaws between cooing and threatening right hooks. She’s the best thing in a production full of great things.”
“When romance in the form of Norman comes into her life, she downplays his advances to shield herself from expected disappointment. Yet to see Magrath’s face change as it slowly dawns on Helen that she is in fact lovely and love-worthy is subtle and touching artistry. Helen learns that making her own happiness independent of her family is important and that being unashamedly true to her feelings carries its own imperatives and weight.”
“It is one of the many nervous smiles in C.P. Taylor’s funny, dramatic, powerful and heart breaking play, And A Nightingale Sang...
She gets superb work from a group of highly skilled actors. None is better than the other. They are Monette McGrath as Helen, Marion Adler as Peggy, Benjamin Eakely as Norman, Sarah Deaver as Joyce, Christian Frost as soldier Eric, John Little as George, and Sam Tsoutsouvas as the elderly friend.
Together, these performers tell us the story of a family, but in a small way, the story of the family of the British people in wartime.”
“As the Vicomte’s greatest challenge, and eventual undoing, Monette Magrath offers up an aura of inner strength and intense emotion which rounds the character out beyond the play’s definition.”
“Equally impressive was the furious monologue from Magrath, who expressed her character’s anger when finding out that her husband was involved in an affair.”