Washington Post - Not Recommended
"...The world premiere at Woolly Mammoth Theatre, directed with modernist flourishes by Sarah Benson, suggests that after the police and the tabloid media have finished their jobs, the time has come for the nation's ironists to move in. But "House of Gold" does not possess the sharpness of insight or wit required for a galvanizing revisit to the facts or the mythology of the Ramsey case. It languishes in a zone of questionable taste, somewhere between satire and pseudo-sermon."
DCist - Somewhat Recommended
"...Your response to the discomfort House of Gold provides will probably have a significant impact on how you view the piece. Disgusted by the exploitation? Filled with outrage and sympathy towards her plight? Genuinely disquieted by our society's sexualization of the young? Then you might come away with a more fired up reaction; I found mine to be rather hollow."
Talkin Broadway - Recommended
"...Briscoe's performance is warm-hearted and genuine, avoiding the trap of adults who sometimes "play down" or condescend when portraying children. She's clear-eyed, savvy about how adults manipulate her and the (occasional) benefits she receives in return—but she knows she can't take care of herself by herself. The other performances are more cartoonish, but effective."
Washingtonian - Somewhat Recommended
"...Everything in this play is designed to make us uncomfortable, whether we’re craning our necks to try and see the action at the top of the house or blocking our ears to stop the jarring, screeching sound of sirens and screaming. In each scene, we can vaguely hear background music playing, whether it’s a six-year-old singing or just some atonal droning depriving us of comfort for even a second. In a final, particularly surreal, particularly Artaudian scene, the characters on stage fight and throw ketchup at each other like some creepy farce, with the three neighborhood bullies now inexplicably wearing white balaclavas and ice-cream-cone hats."
BrightestYoungThings - Somewhat Recommended
"...Parts of House of Gold are thrillingly innovative, so it’s disheartening when its dialogue and thematic content remain hollow. Director Sarah Benson created an ambitious set, one that finds new ways to present on-stage action, and on this level it's easy to give the play a hearty recommendation. But the characters have one too many screws loose and their obsessions are too skewed, so they lose personalities and become unwanted caricatures. I suspect this approach is deliberate. Playwright Gregory S. Moss clearly has a bone to pick with childhood beauty pageants, an aspect of Americana that was a hot-button issue over a decade ago. Some actors fill their roles nicely, but with a dearth of chemistry, it gets uncomfortable when supposedly funny lines don’t even elicit a chuckle."
DramaUrge - Recommended
"...House of Gold, which gets its name from a Hank Williams, Sr. song, has a hit-or-miss quality to it. Part of the problem lies with an ambitious script that hangs a lot of thematic material on its slender shoulders; part lies with the disjointed style of the decentered text, which will exasperate anyone looking for a storyline. The uptempo scenes work best, featuring the excellent Ms. Townley who scales new heights in repressed female rage, Mr. Russotto as her obsessive stage husband, and Mr. Hebert playing a delightfully dogged detective. But the subplot with the trash-talking Jasper and the Apollonian boys (Andrew M. Lincoln, Ben Kingsland, and Mark Halpern) weighs the production down, as do his one-on-ones with The Girl, though Mr. Blair's take on the hefty teen drew the audience in and got the most laughs as a pugilist and lover. And extended monologues by the Joseph Lonely and JonBenét characters, though convincingly delivered by Mr. Flanagan (who channels his inner Tony Perkins) and Ms. Briscoe, seem to read better on the page than the stage. There's also not much here that you haven't heard before. (I was reminded variously of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, episodes of CSI, the Michael Jackson trial, and Patty Hearst kidnapping.) Still, the off-kilter dialogue is arresting in places; and the cadence and style of Mr. Moss's prose has a poetic quality which surfaces from time to time, and gives the play a provocative jolt, promising better things to come."
Edge - Not Recommended
"...Even with accessible (and occasionally humorous) moments between the ones that are more surreal, the plays feels unanchored, open-ended - in a way that’s not good. Even if one can appreciate the potency of the production’s tabloid-infused vision, the voices Moss throws from his psychological circus ultimately tell us nothing intelligible or new and thus we are left with little more than a grotesquerie."
