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* 2018 JEFF AWARDS NOMINEE *
Outstanding Supporting Performer, A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE * 2016 BROADWAYWORLD LOS ANGELES WINNER * Best Featured Actress in a Play, A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE *2016 DRAMA LEAGUE AWARD NOMINEE* Best Revival of a Play, Bedlam's SENE & SENSIBILITY *2016 OFF BROADWAY ALLIANCE AWARD WINNER* Best Unique Theatrical Experience, Bedlam's SENSE & SENSIBILITY * 2015 ELLIOT NORTON AWARD NOMINEE * Outstanding Lead Actress, Bedlam's SAINT JOAN |
* 2015 ELLIOT NORTON AWARD WINNER *
Outstanding Ensemble, Bedlam's SAINT JOAN * 2015 IRNE AWARD WINNER * Outstanding Visiting Performer, Bedlam's SAINT JOAN * 2014 LUCILLE LORTEL AWARD NOMINEE * Outstanding Lead Actress in a Play, Bedlam's SAINT JOAN & HAMLET * 2014 HELEN HAYES AWARD NOMINEE * Outstanding Lead Actress, Bedlam's SAINT JOAN, Olney Theatre Center * 2014 OFF-BROADWAY ALLIANCE AWARD WINNER * Best Revival, Bedlam's SAINT JOAN |
THE SAINTLINESS OF MARGERY KEMPE (The Duke)
"The great Frances Sternhagen played Margery in the original Off Broadway production in 1959, opposite Gene Hackman as her put-upon husband, John...the standard for those roles hasn’t slipped a millimeter... these are actors whose names on a cast list are a tipoff: If they’re in it, exciting performances are likely afoot...Ms. Nichols and Mr. O’Connell are delicious to watch. I kept wanting to put them in a Charles Ludlam play... Ms. Nichols imbues the scheming Margery with the radiant expressiveness of a silent-movie star... No matter how ridiculously self-dramatizing Margery is — and she definitely is that — Ms. Nichols never lets you forget her yearning for a life beyond the one she’s expected to live." – The New York Times (Full Review HERE)
"Nichols shines. She brings a Molly Shannon-esque guilelessness, innocent and cunning at once, to Margery, who uses the limited tools at a medieval laywoman’s disposal to lead a free life.." – Elizabeth Vincentelli, The New Yorker
A LESSON FROM ALOES (Hartford Stage)
"Mr. Tresnjak’s staging of “Aloes” is noteworthy for its poetic unity: Every element of the production locks together into a seamless whole... The cast is up to the challenge of filling this disorienting space, especially Ms. Nichols, who first came to my notice six years ago when she starred in the title role of Bedlam’s small-scale off-off-Broadway revival of “Saint Joan,” proving herself then and thereafter to be an actor of extraordinary force and focus. The impression that she made in Bedlam’s radically reconceived revivals of the classics was no fluke: Ms. Nichols’s work in “Aloes” is so formidable that it might threaten to throw the show out of balance were it not for the fact that her co-stars are so accomplished." – Terry Teachout, The Wall Street Journal (Full Review HERE)
A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE (Center Theatre Group/The Ahmanson)
"Smoldering...His production magnifies the conflicts that are festering under the dramatic surface, imbuing banal exchanges with Pinteresque shadows and slowing the dialogue when tempers are most apt to explode. Even at its most wildly exaggerated, the staging focuses our attention on Miller’s writing at its ambiguous best. The preternatural stillness of the actors allows their sudden extravagant movements to take on heightened significance. The sound design by Tom Gibbons — a droning angst one moment, a percussive tap threatening violent ruin the next — quickens the dramatic pulse. The final scene makes the leap from experimental theater to 21st century opera... [ Weller] brings his own forceful drive to the role. Combs’ Catherine makes a wonderfully innocent Italian American Lolita. Nichols’ Beatrice is perhaps the most authentically naturalistic performance in a production that isn’t aiming for kitchen-sink realism. Neither Esola’s Marco nor Register’s Rodolpho speaks with the faintest trace of an Italian accent, but the theatrical truth of their characters is vividly on display...Whatever you think about the merits of Miller’s demi-classic, this is a magnificently concentrated revival of A View From the Bridge.” – Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times (Full Review HERE)
"The play, with its Greek tragedy undertones, builds to a final, tense requiem... The performances are stellar...Nichols’ quiet poise make everyone feel Beatrice’s growing concern." –Guardian Liberty Voice (Full Review HERE)
"The limbo-like setting helps emphasize the naturalistic performances of van Hove’s dynamic cast... Weller harbors a quiet intensity that masks a nerve-wracking potential for violence... Nichols is a natural fit for her role of long-suffering wife, Beatrice. With her marriage slipping away, her attempts to get Eddie to see his errors seem one-part hopeful and two-parts hopeless, as if she, like the rest, has already figured out the inevitable end." –The Hollywood Reporter (Full Review HERE)
"Nichols’ tigress of a Beatrice, the budding womanliness of Combs’s Catherine, Ryan’s haunted Alfieri, and Esola’s volcanic Marco are all absolutely splendid as is blond hunk Register, whose decision to play Rodolpho without a hint of the feminine makes Eddie’s mistaken certainty all the more unfounded, and Overshown and Binstock both deliver in minor roles." – StageScene LA (Full Review HERE)
SENSE & SENSIBILITY (BEDLAM/The Gym at Judson )
"A Whirlwind of Delicious Gossip... Given that your response to the early scenes will probably be surprised, riotous laughter, you are equally likely to find yourself shedding discreet tears — the kind that cry out for cambric handkerchiefs — by the end. This misty-eyed state is induced not just by Austen’s artistry in setting to rights a world at odds with itself, but also by a troupe’s triumphant joy in giving such defiantly theatrical form to a literary narrative. The primary subjects of those rumors are the female members of the family newly dispossessed by the death of old John Dashwood (John Russell). There are his widow, Mrs. Dashwood (Samantha Steinmetz), and their three daughters: Elinor (endowed with a wonderfully anxious equanimity by Andrus Nichols), the eldest and most sensible of the lot; Marianne (a delightfully volatile Ms. Hamill), the determined romantic; and Margaret (Jessica Frey), the youngest... Irresistible theater." – Ben Brantley, The New York Times (Full Review HERE)
"The twisty tale of the Dashwood sisters — bottled-up Elinor (an exceptional Andrus Nichols) and effusive Marianne (Hamill) — seems familiar and fresh at the same time." –New York Daily News (Full Review HERE)
"Bedlam’s galloping adaptation of Austen’s 1811 novel, about the romantic trials of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor (a superb Andrus Nichols) and Marianne (Kate Hamill), spirited young women pauperized by their father’s death... The director, Eric Tucker, isn’t one to let his actors sit around and embroider. They are nearly always on their feet—rolling wheeled scenery, trading bits of gossip, whirling in anachronistic dances, or tussling in a rugby scrum." – The New Yorker (Full Review HERE)
"Finally, I am in love with Andrus Nichols, who plays Elinor with such intelligence and presence that it almost erases my memory of Thompson in the part. Somehow, I want her to remain with Bedlam (which she co-founded with Tucker and is the Producing Director of) and continue these intimate productions and be on Broadway and be in film and TV as her talent deserves. It makes no sense, but love never does." –Michael Giltz, Huffington Post (Full Review HERE)
"Bedlam, an off-Broadway powerhouse, is a collective of actors of such finesse, such flexibility, such charm, such precision, as to just about redefine ensemble... Sense and Sensibility provides a splendid evening in the theater, and so I offer Marianne's advice: "Go! Go! Go!" –Philadelphia Inquirer (Full Review HERE)
"The rapid fire energy of this ‘Sense & Sensibility’ will definitely knock your knickers off... Andrus Nichols (Elinor) has a quiet reserve and genuine want for civility that is captivating to watch." – New York Theatre Guide (Full Review HERE)
"Elinor (Andrus Nichols, superb) is a pillar of good sense who keeps her feelings in check." Towle Road (Full Review HERE)
"What's most exciting about Bedlam, though, is not that the staging is great, down-to-earth fun. It's that it's all in the service of theater's prime mission: storytelling... Especially good is Andrus Nichols, who plays the proper, practical Elinor, subtly conveying the character's heartache beneath her decorous exterior."
–The Record (Full Review HERE)
"The grave simplicity of Andrus Nichols’s fine performance steadied the storytelling. In some ways her conception of Elinor even solves a slight problem with Austen’s: In the novel, Elinor has little or nothing to learn about herself through the plot’s machinations. She is perfectly pragmatic right from the start; only Marianne has to change dramatically. But as Nichols has fashioned Elinor for the stage, that pragmatism is, at first, almost insufferably pat, and so, over the course of the action, she must learn to meet her sister partway." – New York Magazine/Vulture (Full review HERE)
TWELFTH NIGHT and WHAT YOU WILL (BEDLAM )
"Every so often, evidence arises that acting might just be the most satisfying profession on the planet. Take the company called Bedlam, which is putting on not one but two inspired productions of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” in a small and airless room in the garment district that seats about 50, and making you feel like its members are the luckiest people alive." – Ben Brantley, The New York Times (Full Review HERE)
SAINT JOAN (BEDLAM / CAMBRIDGE, MA)
"Andrus Nichols embodies Joan’s bravery with a raw and unguarded performance, raspy-voiced and without vanity... Nichols leaves both Joan’s glories and her nerve endings exposed. Whatever you believe when it comes to miracles and heavenly voices, you’ll never doubt her conviction." –The Boston Globe (Full Review HERE)
SAINT JOAN, HAMLET, and SENSE & SENSIBILITY make Ben Brantley's list of BEST THEATER OF 2014! HERE
THE SEAGULL (BEDLAM)
"...the depressive Masha, superbly played by Ms. Nichols, who I’m beginning to think can do anything. " –Ben Brantley, The New York Times (Full Review HERE)
"As always with Bedlam, the close physical proximity of players and audience is used to breath-catching effect, above all by Andrus Nichols, who plays Masha. What she does is as much a matter of reaction as of action, and her serious, sensitive face is so open and expressive that watching her respond to the other actors in the cast—especially if you’re sitting a half-dozen feet away from her, as I was during the second act—is like reading a fever chart." – The Wall Street Journal (Full Review HERE)
SENSE & SENSIBILITY (BEDLAM)
"The wiser, older Elinor is more contemplative and restrained. But Ms. Nichols’s centered, nuanced performance gives her an emotional transparency that allows us to see that in Austen the quiet suffer as intensely as, and perhaps more sincerely than, the loud." – Ben Brantley, The New York Times (Full Review HERE)
"Elinor Dashwood (played by company cofounder Andrus Nichols with a De Havilland–style mix of spine and vulnerability)..." TimeOut New York (Full Review HERE)
SAINT JOAN (BEDLAM)
"It is Ms. Nichols’s Joan, though, who perhaps best incarnates the indomitable essence of Bedlam. This actress also manages to make separate and convincing sense of Hamlet’s forceful mom and hysteria-prone girlfriend. But her Joan is, as she must be, a force of nature, a creature who wins over people through unconditional faith and solar willpower." – Ben Brantley, The New York Times (Full Review HERE)
"Nichols’s vibrant, nuanced, and appealing portrait of Joan gives the show a propulsive through-line. Scampering onto the stage with coltish excitement, Joan is a study in adolescent giddiness when we first meet her; in successive scenes, she seems increasingly mature and disillusioned, right through to her exhausted, stubborn showdown with the clergy who sentence her to death...this is Nichols’s show, and her brilliantly calibrated turn in the epilogue, especially, helps the production pack a triumphant emotional wallop." – The Washington Post
"A production to be treasured...the husky-voiced Ms. Nichols, who has more than a little of Elizabeth Marvel’s melancholy intelligence, excels as the certitude that won Joan convert after convert starts to bring her ever closer to a grisly death." – The New York Times (CRITICS' PICK, Top 10)
"Nichols’ Joan has a purity and focus that’s cleansed of all romance, normalized to human scale — she seems to be experiencing the play in real time, not as a manifesto that she’s memorized. That’s not nearly as easy or intuitive as it sounds..." – New York Magazine
"Unforgettable... the most exciting George Bernard Shaw Revival I've ever seen, bar none... fuses Shakespearean speed with Brechtian directness. Stately it isn't, but thrilling it most definitely is: Ms. Nichols's acting is so intense that it makes the Access Theater seem 20 times bigger, and her colleagues support her to galvanizing effect." – The Wall Street Journal (Best Revival of a Play 2012)
"At the center of the show is Nichols' exceptional turn as Joan. There are times when her performance is nothing short of a hyperactive child, which is strangely endearing, and there are other times, particularly when her voice falls into its lower, deliciously smoky, register that she does seem to have a spark of an otherworldly divinity in her."
– The Huffington Post
"Andrus Nichols gives a superbly assured and ultimately desperately moving performance as the country maid possessed by a faith that eventually leads to immolation at the stake and (four centuries later) sanctification.Oddly, Anne-Marie Duff, the last performer to excel in this role, is currently also in town playing the Scottish King's wife at Lincoln Center. The difference between them is less in the quality of the acting, which is a huge compliment to Miss Nichols, but the nature of the experience. The way that Bedlam works, spectators are often within a foot or two of plain-clothes warriors, priests and future saints, whereas at the National, Miss Duff was placed on a relatively distant pedestal." –British Theatre Guide
"Joan herself, with the charisma that comes from divine conviction, is among the play’s most persuasive orators. As portrayed by Andrus Nichols, who shrivels skeptics with her eyes and stalks the stage like a Roman general, she’s hard to argue with... The verbal pyrotechnics of Bedlam’s production, then, do honor as much to Joan’s unquenchable spirit as to the world she left in her wake. " – Backstage (CRITICS' PICK)
"Go see this show. . . Joan, magnificently embodied by Andrus Nichols, is surrounded by three other equally astute talents. . . Tucker has taken the written word, garnered great actors, and shot a theatrical spear through the off-Broadway scene. . . There is no need for a star to carry a show, no need for grand theatrics. Just real talent, doing the real thing." – Showbusiness Weekly
"Ms. Nichols is a joy to watch as she expertly moves Joan from a child-like wonder at the power of God and the glory of France through stages of frustration and naiveté at the overbearing power of the political to an unadulterated bewilderment with the men who come to dictate her fate. As Joan’s faith in God and the righteousness of her mission is so very strong, the character risks an unappealing flatness, but Ms. Nichols manages to show us Joan preserving her steadfast faith in the immortal beyond, while growing increasingly frustrated in her negotiations of the everyday... with the audience in arm’s reach, Ms. Nichols shows most clearly and brilliantly the anguish that engulfs Shaw’s Joan. – Stage Magazine
"Andrus Nichols’ performance is tremendous, illuminating every stage of Joan’s journey from country lass to soldier to hero to scapegoat, and finally to saint." – theasy.com
"Andrus Nichols gives a ferocious performance...fearless..." –Metro NY (CRITICS' PICK)
"The Maid herself is played magnificently by Andrus Nichols, whose silver voice and piercing eyes bring you deep into the mind of this legendary girl... A general admission ticket for SAINT JOAN is $30, and given that its full-blooded exuberance will renew your faith in the possibilities of epic theater, it's worth much more." – nytheatre.com
HAMLET (BEDLAM)
"Andrus Nichols, who was fiercely eloquent in the title role of Bedlam's "Saint Joan," brings off with seeming effortlessness the improbable feat of doubling as Gertrude and Ophelia (not to mention Guildenstern and an assortment of smaller parts)." – Terry Teachout, The Wall Street Journal
"The most fluid, most high-pressure, and most direct access to Elsinore possible... Nichols’ Ophelia begins the play as a nearly cracked egg, and her mental collapse is a heartbreaking portrait of abused fragility." – Backstage (Score: A)
"A landmark Ophelia" – shakesperiences.com
HAMLET (The Shakespeare Forum)
"...and revealed one of The Bard’s most difficult-to-respect characters as a truly rich portrait. That character is Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother and queen of Denmark. Through 11 stage performances, a half dozen movie versions, and countless readings of this play, I have long considered the women in Hamlet to lack much substance, especially compared to Shakespeare’s usual portraits of women... I guess I simply have never seen hands as capable as that of Andrus Nichols, who plays Gertrude... In Nichols’ playing, the complexity of this character is more in what she doesn’t say than says, and this she plays out brilliantly in the closet scene... Nichols’ Gertrude is not admitting to any guilt or even lack of judgment; she’s overwhelmed with emotional pain made worse by the salt her son keeps rubbing and rubbing into her wounded soul...grappling with the clear evidence that Hamlet really is insane. It’s a heart-wrenching moment, as Gertrude glances in threefold helplessness from son to Polonius’ body and to vacant space occupied by the ghost..."– Shakespeariences.com
HELLO FROM BERTHA (Pook's HIll | Abingdon Theater)
"Andrus Nichols, whose work last season in BEDLAM’s Saint Joan was award-worthy, is heartbreaking in “Hello from Bertha,” playing a prostitute in the throes of a physical and mental breakdown." –theasy.com
HAMLET (We Players on Alcatraz)
"Sharp, smart, energetic, and poised. The language was clear, the emotional timbre spot on... Andrus Nichols was wonderful, thoughtful, and muscled..."
– Lauren Gunderson, Huffington Post
"Andrus Nichols is good enough to win over just about anybody... Her understated delivery slowly revealed a sly sense of humor...she avoided predictable readings of the play's most quotable bits. (Her off-handed delivery of the words "Alas, poor Yorick" got a laugh like I've never heard for that line.)" – SF Weekly
"[Nichols'] passions' sharp as her swordplay..." – SF Bay Guardian
THE LIBERTINE (The Fools' Theatre)
"Andrus Nichols portrays Elizabeth Malet, Rochester's long-suffering wife, with heartbreaking dignity..." – nytheatre.com (Top 10 List)
THE RAINMAKER (Goshen Players)
"Nichols unleashes Lizzie's real beauty at just the right time. Her performance is quite simply stunning. Remember this name. Andrus Nichols is a rising star."
–Waterbury Republican American
"The great Frances Sternhagen played Margery in the original Off Broadway production in 1959, opposite Gene Hackman as her put-upon husband, John...the standard for those roles hasn’t slipped a millimeter... these are actors whose names on a cast list are a tipoff: If they’re in it, exciting performances are likely afoot...Ms. Nichols and Mr. O’Connell are delicious to watch. I kept wanting to put them in a Charles Ludlam play... Ms. Nichols imbues the scheming Margery with the radiant expressiveness of a silent-movie star... No matter how ridiculously self-dramatizing Margery is — and she definitely is that — Ms. Nichols never lets you forget her yearning for a life beyond the one she’s expected to live." – The New York Times (Full Review HERE)
"Nichols shines. She brings a Molly Shannon-esque guilelessness, innocent and cunning at once, to Margery, who uses the limited tools at a medieval laywoman’s disposal to lead a free life.." – Elizabeth Vincentelli, The New Yorker
A LESSON FROM ALOES (Hartford Stage)
"Mr. Tresnjak’s staging of “Aloes” is noteworthy for its poetic unity: Every element of the production locks together into a seamless whole... The cast is up to the challenge of filling this disorienting space, especially Ms. Nichols, who first came to my notice six years ago when she starred in the title role of Bedlam’s small-scale off-off-Broadway revival of “Saint Joan,” proving herself then and thereafter to be an actor of extraordinary force and focus. The impression that she made in Bedlam’s radically reconceived revivals of the classics was no fluke: Ms. Nichols’s work in “Aloes” is so formidable that it might threaten to throw the show out of balance were it not for the fact that her co-stars are so accomplished." – Terry Teachout, The Wall Street Journal (Full Review HERE)
A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE (Center Theatre Group/The Ahmanson)
"Smoldering...His production magnifies the conflicts that are festering under the dramatic surface, imbuing banal exchanges with Pinteresque shadows and slowing the dialogue when tempers are most apt to explode. Even at its most wildly exaggerated, the staging focuses our attention on Miller’s writing at its ambiguous best. The preternatural stillness of the actors allows their sudden extravagant movements to take on heightened significance. The sound design by Tom Gibbons — a droning angst one moment, a percussive tap threatening violent ruin the next — quickens the dramatic pulse. The final scene makes the leap from experimental theater to 21st century opera... [ Weller] brings his own forceful drive to the role. Combs’ Catherine makes a wonderfully innocent Italian American Lolita. Nichols’ Beatrice is perhaps the most authentically naturalistic performance in a production that isn’t aiming for kitchen-sink realism. Neither Esola’s Marco nor Register’s Rodolpho speaks with the faintest trace of an Italian accent, but the theatrical truth of their characters is vividly on display...Whatever you think about the merits of Miller’s demi-classic, this is a magnificently concentrated revival of A View From the Bridge.” – Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times (Full Review HERE)
"The play, with its Greek tragedy undertones, builds to a final, tense requiem... The performances are stellar...Nichols’ quiet poise make everyone feel Beatrice’s growing concern." –Guardian Liberty Voice (Full Review HERE)
"The limbo-like setting helps emphasize the naturalistic performances of van Hove’s dynamic cast... Weller harbors a quiet intensity that masks a nerve-wracking potential for violence... Nichols is a natural fit for her role of long-suffering wife, Beatrice. With her marriage slipping away, her attempts to get Eddie to see his errors seem one-part hopeful and two-parts hopeless, as if she, like the rest, has already figured out the inevitable end." –The Hollywood Reporter (Full Review HERE)
"Nichols’ tigress of a Beatrice, the budding womanliness of Combs’s Catherine, Ryan’s haunted Alfieri, and Esola’s volcanic Marco are all absolutely splendid as is blond hunk Register, whose decision to play Rodolpho without a hint of the feminine makes Eddie’s mistaken certainty all the more unfounded, and Overshown and Binstock both deliver in minor roles." – StageScene LA (Full Review HERE)
SENSE & SENSIBILITY (BEDLAM/The Gym at Judson )
"A Whirlwind of Delicious Gossip... Given that your response to the early scenes will probably be surprised, riotous laughter, you are equally likely to find yourself shedding discreet tears — the kind that cry out for cambric handkerchiefs — by the end. This misty-eyed state is induced not just by Austen’s artistry in setting to rights a world at odds with itself, but also by a troupe’s triumphant joy in giving such defiantly theatrical form to a literary narrative. The primary subjects of those rumors are the female members of the family newly dispossessed by the death of old John Dashwood (John Russell). There are his widow, Mrs. Dashwood (Samantha Steinmetz), and their three daughters: Elinor (endowed with a wonderfully anxious equanimity by Andrus Nichols), the eldest and most sensible of the lot; Marianne (a delightfully volatile Ms. Hamill), the determined romantic; and Margaret (Jessica Frey), the youngest... Irresistible theater." – Ben Brantley, The New York Times (Full Review HERE)
"The twisty tale of the Dashwood sisters — bottled-up Elinor (an exceptional Andrus Nichols) and effusive Marianne (Hamill) — seems familiar and fresh at the same time." –New York Daily News (Full Review HERE)
"Bedlam’s galloping adaptation of Austen’s 1811 novel, about the romantic trials of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor (a superb Andrus Nichols) and Marianne (Kate Hamill), spirited young women pauperized by their father’s death... The director, Eric Tucker, isn’t one to let his actors sit around and embroider. They are nearly always on their feet—rolling wheeled scenery, trading bits of gossip, whirling in anachronistic dances, or tussling in a rugby scrum." – The New Yorker (Full Review HERE)
"Finally, I am in love with Andrus Nichols, who plays Elinor with such intelligence and presence that it almost erases my memory of Thompson in the part. Somehow, I want her to remain with Bedlam (which she co-founded with Tucker and is the Producing Director of) and continue these intimate productions and be on Broadway and be in film and TV as her talent deserves. It makes no sense, but love never does." –Michael Giltz, Huffington Post (Full Review HERE)
"Bedlam, an off-Broadway powerhouse, is a collective of actors of such finesse, such flexibility, such charm, such precision, as to just about redefine ensemble... Sense and Sensibility provides a splendid evening in the theater, and so I offer Marianne's advice: "Go! Go! Go!" –Philadelphia Inquirer (Full Review HERE)
"The rapid fire energy of this ‘Sense & Sensibility’ will definitely knock your knickers off... Andrus Nichols (Elinor) has a quiet reserve and genuine want for civility that is captivating to watch." – New York Theatre Guide (Full Review HERE)
"Elinor (Andrus Nichols, superb) is a pillar of good sense who keeps her feelings in check." Towle Road (Full Review HERE)
"What's most exciting about Bedlam, though, is not that the staging is great, down-to-earth fun. It's that it's all in the service of theater's prime mission: storytelling... Especially good is Andrus Nichols, who plays the proper, practical Elinor, subtly conveying the character's heartache beneath her decorous exterior."
–The Record (Full Review HERE)
"The grave simplicity of Andrus Nichols’s fine performance steadied the storytelling. In some ways her conception of Elinor even solves a slight problem with Austen’s: In the novel, Elinor has little or nothing to learn about herself through the plot’s machinations. She is perfectly pragmatic right from the start; only Marianne has to change dramatically. But as Nichols has fashioned Elinor for the stage, that pragmatism is, at first, almost insufferably pat, and so, over the course of the action, she must learn to meet her sister partway." – New York Magazine/Vulture (Full review HERE)
TWELFTH NIGHT and WHAT YOU WILL (BEDLAM )
"Every so often, evidence arises that acting might just be the most satisfying profession on the planet. Take the company called Bedlam, which is putting on not one but two inspired productions of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” in a small and airless room in the garment district that seats about 50, and making you feel like its members are the luckiest people alive." – Ben Brantley, The New York Times (Full Review HERE)
SAINT JOAN (BEDLAM / CAMBRIDGE, MA)
"Andrus Nichols embodies Joan’s bravery with a raw and unguarded performance, raspy-voiced and without vanity... Nichols leaves both Joan’s glories and her nerve endings exposed. Whatever you believe when it comes to miracles and heavenly voices, you’ll never doubt her conviction." –The Boston Globe (Full Review HERE)
SAINT JOAN, HAMLET, and SENSE & SENSIBILITY make Ben Brantley's list of BEST THEATER OF 2014! HERE
THE SEAGULL (BEDLAM)
"...the depressive Masha, superbly played by Ms. Nichols, who I’m beginning to think can do anything. " –Ben Brantley, The New York Times (Full Review HERE)
"As always with Bedlam, the close physical proximity of players and audience is used to breath-catching effect, above all by Andrus Nichols, who plays Masha. What she does is as much a matter of reaction as of action, and her serious, sensitive face is so open and expressive that watching her respond to the other actors in the cast—especially if you’re sitting a half-dozen feet away from her, as I was during the second act—is like reading a fever chart." – The Wall Street Journal (Full Review HERE)
SENSE & SENSIBILITY (BEDLAM)
"The wiser, older Elinor is more contemplative and restrained. But Ms. Nichols’s centered, nuanced performance gives her an emotional transparency that allows us to see that in Austen the quiet suffer as intensely as, and perhaps more sincerely than, the loud." – Ben Brantley, The New York Times (Full Review HERE)
"Elinor Dashwood (played by company cofounder Andrus Nichols with a De Havilland–style mix of spine and vulnerability)..." TimeOut New York (Full Review HERE)
SAINT JOAN (BEDLAM)
"It is Ms. Nichols’s Joan, though, who perhaps best incarnates the indomitable essence of Bedlam. This actress also manages to make separate and convincing sense of Hamlet’s forceful mom and hysteria-prone girlfriend. But her Joan is, as she must be, a force of nature, a creature who wins over people through unconditional faith and solar willpower." – Ben Brantley, The New York Times (Full Review HERE)
"Nichols’s vibrant, nuanced, and appealing portrait of Joan gives the show a propulsive through-line. Scampering onto the stage with coltish excitement, Joan is a study in adolescent giddiness when we first meet her; in successive scenes, she seems increasingly mature and disillusioned, right through to her exhausted, stubborn showdown with the clergy who sentence her to death...this is Nichols’s show, and her brilliantly calibrated turn in the epilogue, especially, helps the production pack a triumphant emotional wallop." – The Washington Post
"A production to be treasured...the husky-voiced Ms. Nichols, who has more than a little of Elizabeth Marvel’s melancholy intelligence, excels as the certitude that won Joan convert after convert starts to bring her ever closer to a grisly death." – The New York Times (CRITICS' PICK, Top 10)
"Nichols’ Joan has a purity and focus that’s cleansed of all romance, normalized to human scale — she seems to be experiencing the play in real time, not as a manifesto that she’s memorized. That’s not nearly as easy or intuitive as it sounds..." – New York Magazine
"Unforgettable... the most exciting George Bernard Shaw Revival I've ever seen, bar none... fuses Shakespearean speed with Brechtian directness. Stately it isn't, but thrilling it most definitely is: Ms. Nichols's acting is so intense that it makes the Access Theater seem 20 times bigger, and her colleagues support her to galvanizing effect." – The Wall Street Journal (Best Revival of a Play 2012)
"At the center of the show is Nichols' exceptional turn as Joan. There are times when her performance is nothing short of a hyperactive child, which is strangely endearing, and there are other times, particularly when her voice falls into its lower, deliciously smoky, register that she does seem to have a spark of an otherworldly divinity in her."
– The Huffington Post
"Andrus Nichols gives a superbly assured and ultimately desperately moving performance as the country maid possessed by a faith that eventually leads to immolation at the stake and (four centuries later) sanctification.Oddly, Anne-Marie Duff, the last performer to excel in this role, is currently also in town playing the Scottish King's wife at Lincoln Center. The difference between them is less in the quality of the acting, which is a huge compliment to Miss Nichols, but the nature of the experience. The way that Bedlam works, spectators are often within a foot or two of plain-clothes warriors, priests and future saints, whereas at the National, Miss Duff was placed on a relatively distant pedestal." –British Theatre Guide
"Joan herself, with the charisma that comes from divine conviction, is among the play’s most persuasive orators. As portrayed by Andrus Nichols, who shrivels skeptics with her eyes and stalks the stage like a Roman general, she’s hard to argue with... The verbal pyrotechnics of Bedlam’s production, then, do honor as much to Joan’s unquenchable spirit as to the world she left in her wake. " – Backstage (CRITICS' PICK)
"Go see this show. . . Joan, magnificently embodied by Andrus Nichols, is surrounded by three other equally astute talents. . . Tucker has taken the written word, garnered great actors, and shot a theatrical spear through the off-Broadway scene. . . There is no need for a star to carry a show, no need for grand theatrics. Just real talent, doing the real thing." – Showbusiness Weekly
"Ms. Nichols is a joy to watch as she expertly moves Joan from a child-like wonder at the power of God and the glory of France through stages of frustration and naiveté at the overbearing power of the political to an unadulterated bewilderment with the men who come to dictate her fate. As Joan’s faith in God and the righteousness of her mission is so very strong, the character risks an unappealing flatness, but Ms. Nichols manages to show us Joan preserving her steadfast faith in the immortal beyond, while growing increasingly frustrated in her negotiations of the everyday... with the audience in arm’s reach, Ms. Nichols shows most clearly and brilliantly the anguish that engulfs Shaw’s Joan. – Stage Magazine
"Andrus Nichols’ performance is tremendous, illuminating every stage of Joan’s journey from country lass to soldier to hero to scapegoat, and finally to saint." – theasy.com
"Andrus Nichols gives a ferocious performance...fearless..." –Metro NY (CRITICS' PICK)
"The Maid herself is played magnificently by Andrus Nichols, whose silver voice and piercing eyes bring you deep into the mind of this legendary girl... A general admission ticket for SAINT JOAN is $30, and given that its full-blooded exuberance will renew your faith in the possibilities of epic theater, it's worth much more." – nytheatre.com
HAMLET (BEDLAM)
"Andrus Nichols, who was fiercely eloquent in the title role of Bedlam's "Saint Joan," brings off with seeming effortlessness the improbable feat of doubling as Gertrude and Ophelia (not to mention Guildenstern and an assortment of smaller parts)." – Terry Teachout, The Wall Street Journal
"The most fluid, most high-pressure, and most direct access to Elsinore possible... Nichols’ Ophelia begins the play as a nearly cracked egg, and her mental collapse is a heartbreaking portrait of abused fragility." – Backstage (Score: A)
"A landmark Ophelia" – shakesperiences.com
HAMLET (The Shakespeare Forum)
"...and revealed one of The Bard’s most difficult-to-respect characters as a truly rich portrait. That character is Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother and queen of Denmark. Through 11 stage performances, a half dozen movie versions, and countless readings of this play, I have long considered the women in Hamlet to lack much substance, especially compared to Shakespeare’s usual portraits of women... I guess I simply have never seen hands as capable as that of Andrus Nichols, who plays Gertrude... In Nichols’ playing, the complexity of this character is more in what she doesn’t say than says, and this she plays out brilliantly in the closet scene... Nichols’ Gertrude is not admitting to any guilt or even lack of judgment; she’s overwhelmed with emotional pain made worse by the salt her son keeps rubbing and rubbing into her wounded soul...grappling with the clear evidence that Hamlet really is insane. It’s a heart-wrenching moment, as Gertrude glances in threefold helplessness from son to Polonius’ body and to vacant space occupied by the ghost..."– Shakespeariences.com
HELLO FROM BERTHA (Pook's HIll | Abingdon Theater)
"Andrus Nichols, whose work last season in BEDLAM’s Saint Joan was award-worthy, is heartbreaking in “Hello from Bertha,” playing a prostitute in the throes of a physical and mental breakdown." –theasy.com
HAMLET (We Players on Alcatraz)
"Sharp, smart, energetic, and poised. The language was clear, the emotional timbre spot on... Andrus Nichols was wonderful, thoughtful, and muscled..."
– Lauren Gunderson, Huffington Post
"Andrus Nichols is good enough to win over just about anybody... Her understated delivery slowly revealed a sly sense of humor...she avoided predictable readings of the play's most quotable bits. (Her off-handed delivery of the words "Alas, poor Yorick" got a laugh like I've never heard for that line.)" – SF Weekly
"[Nichols'] passions' sharp as her swordplay..." – SF Bay Guardian
THE LIBERTINE (The Fools' Theatre)
"Andrus Nichols portrays Elizabeth Malet, Rochester's long-suffering wife, with heartbreaking dignity..." – nytheatre.com (Top 10 List)
THE RAINMAKER (Goshen Players)
"Nichols unleashes Lizzie's real beauty at just the right time. Her performance is quite simply stunning. Remember this name. Andrus Nichols is a rising star."
–Waterbury Republican American