The New York Times - Recommended
"Affectingly elicits the all-too-human factor in the weary machinations of state policy...As he demonstrated in his earlier plays about international politics, Mr. Rogers doesn't traffic in superheroes...As embodied by Jennifer Ehle and Jefferson Mays, they are complicated beings...Their understanding and re-creation of the signature styles of allies and enemies make for unexpected moments of personal catharsis and illumination. They also happen to be the stuff of crackling theater."
Associated Press - Highly Recommended
"A riveting political thriller with a personal approach...Such is the skill of the production that we feel caught up in real negotiations of the so-called Oslo Accord, although the top-notch ensemble is deftly portraying both real people and invented characters...The talents of cast and crew in ‘Oslo' make a complex historical event feel understandable, intimate and profoundly affecting."
Hollywood Reporter - Highly Recommended
"One remarkable aspect of this very fine production, directed with unerringly precise attention to detail by Bartlett Sher, is that while its mechanics as a theatrical presentation are emphasized from the start, they enhance rather than impede our involvement in a fascinating true story. This is a play alive with tension, intrigue, humor, bristling intelligence and emotional peaks that are subdued yet intensely moving, which concludes unexpectedly on a poignant note of hope."
Vulture - Recommended
"It's not often I think a three-hour play could profitably be longer, but J. T. Rogers's gripping, big-boned 'Oslo' needs all the meat and muscle it can pack on its frame...Whether these characters are truly drawn is another matter...What we do know is what has happened in the years since, much of it betraying the joyful climax of the play's events. That not-so-secret history is what makes Rogers's play feel excruciatingly necessary and timely more than two decades later."
New York Theater - Recommended
"A fascinating play…The three-hour running time went by relatively swiftly for me. The creative team invests the principal characters with personalities…It helps that the adversaries are played so credibly…'Oslo' gives us not only a lucid refresher course on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and provides us entertainment that is both surprisingly funny and suspenseful. It also leaves us with a sense that maybe even the world's most unsettling situations can someday be settled."
Variety - Highly Recommended
"Unequivocally fascinating...Rogers'clever dialogue really is that witty. You get the facts, but you get them delivered with intelligence and humor by this dream of a cast. It's the petty stuff - the pseudonyms, the clandestine phone calls, the drinking competitions, and all the other trappings of macho bravado - that makes these intimidating characters so human. And so funny....This is what we call drama, and it's what we live for."
Entertainment Weekly - Highly Recommended
"Rogers has a bit of a gift for transforming contentious, complex historical subjects into digestible, but not dumbed-down, entertainment...Though ‘Oslo' clocks in at about three hours, it's by no means a slog...But perhaps what's most impressive about ‘Oslo' is its evenhandedness - and its optimism. You might wonder with whom Rogers sides, the Israelis or the Palestinians. Frankly, neither. Or both. What's clear is this: He's for peace."
Newsday - Recommended
"J.T. Rogers' ambitious three-hour, fact-based fiction that director Bartlett Sher and his creative team have lovingly, painstakingly staged...The political making of sausage is legendarily not a pretty sight. It is also pretty talky. Still, Rogers, Sher and their generous, marvelous cast do much to lighten the agonizing back-and-forth...The meticulous work behind the short-lived accord leaves us even more hopeless about the world, but a bit more upbeat about the storytelling possibilities of the theater."
amNY - Recommended
"J.T. Rogers dramatizes the tense negotiations that led to the Oslo Accord in his long-winded but smart, occasionally humorous and objectively-observed ensemble drama...The performances are excellent...The play may be dense and choppy, but a more narrow and delicate treatment probably could not have captured the scale and intensity of the political process."
NorthJersey - Recommended
"All the characters in 'Oslo,' even supporting figures, are given distinctive qualities. That helps make the well-acted play, which runs an overlong three hours, surprisingly lively and involving, even with the dramatic problems that confronted Rogers and director Bartlett Sher…In showcasing the characters, Rogers injects crowd-pleasing humor and sentimentality, but in reasonable doses. The vital importance of the secret talks, coming after many decades of conflict, is dominant."
Time Out New York - Highly Recommended
"Although the play is nearly three hours long, Bartlett Sher's seamless cast of 14 keeps it from seeming dry, even when Rogers's writing - fictionalized but often drawing very closely from published sources - slips into overt exposition...As America and the world hurtle toward greater polarization, the play provides a small measure of hope."
The Wrap - Somewhat Recommended
"Rogers and director Sher are good at telling a complicated story, creating suspense, and keeping over 20 characters from merging into one another...Too many of the characters emerge only as broad types…Rogers captures the mechanics of the negotiations and Sher's direction keeps them moving at hyper speed. What we aren't given during the course of this three-hour play is a character study. Who are Juul and Rod-Larsen?...In 'Oslo' they emerge more as devices than characters."
Village Voice - Recommended
"'Oslo' is, at heart, a friendship saga, detailing the slow, unpredictable ways in which sworn enemies can warm to each other...In each of Rogers's three acts, the tension slowly mounts...Theatrically, 'Oslo' falls somewhat flat. Anxious to clarify the diplomatic intricacies, Rogers supplements his dialogue with repetitive direct-address narration...Still, 'Oslo' contains a form of thoughtful hope."
Financial Times - Somewhat Recommended
"J.T. Rogers' engaging new play...For more than two and a half hours, the rival delegations go at each other hammer and tongs while gradually moving towards a deal...The play itself succeeds in drawing us into the minutiae of now dimly remembered diplomatic brawling. It's a dramatically conventional and occasionally heavy-handed work lacking intellectual zing. But the many frustrations and occasional triumphs of the year-long negotiations are scrupulously conveyed."
CurtainUp - Highly Recommended
"A fact-based but highly original drama that's as entertaining and suspenseful as it is informative and thought provoking. Sure it's talky and probably could have been trimmed a bit. However, as written Mr. Rogers, staged with dynamic simplicity by Bartlett Sher and with fourteen top drawer actors the three hours simply fly by...'Oslo' is not just Rogers' best play, but the best play I've seen all year. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it won or was nominated for next year's Pulitzer."
Talkin Broadway - Recommended
"Rogers mines every occurrence, no matter how minor, for new forms of tension and release, while never shying away from the underlying accomplishments...Sher has provided a staging that is perhaps drier than ideal...But he does always focus you on the matters at hand, and keeps things thoroughly followable and digestible...Rogers has not overcome the material's inherent catastrophic problem: The Oslo Accords did not lead to peace."
Cititour.com - Highly Recommended
"History brought to life with vivid clarity. Real people imbued with personality and complexity. Staging so fluid it's breathtaking. Death and change constantly in the air. Three hours flying by in what seems like minutes...I'm talking about 'Oslo,' J.T. Rogers' dazzling drama...'Oslo' may not change the face of theater in the way 'Hamilton' has, but it's easily the best play I've seen in 2016."
TheaterMania - Recommended
"While Sher's production and Rogers' language draw us into the world of international diplomacy, it is the performances that hold us rapt…‘Oslo' is extraordinary in its ability to chart the temperature of the negotiations, but its laser-like focus misses how external political factors influenced the jockeying inside the room...Rogers has crafted an invaluable and incredibly watchable drama about a hugely important event that far too many Americans fail to fully understand."
TheaterScene.net - Highly Recommended
"J.T. Rogers effectively walks a tightrope between what was fact and what was fiction in his inspired and tightly drawn drama, ‘Oslo.' With wit, finely honed dialogue, the appropriate dollop of levity, and sufficient timeline accuracy, he portrays crucial events leading up to the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization."
Epoch Times - Recommended
"Far more than simply political discourse, with preaching kept to a minimum, the play shows itself to be a human drama leavened with humor. And the characters come across as fully formed…The play is tightly directed by Bartlett Sher, who wisely allows the story to take center stage. Running almost three hours, each of Rogers's scenes and situations feels essential."
Huffington Post - Highly Recommended
"Gripping, provocative, wrenching, funny and altogether riveting. Head up to Lincoln Center Theater's Mitzi Newhouse, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat...Matters and ideas move so swiftly that the play flies by far quicker than some eighty-minute one-acts we can name...The cast is remarkable on just about all sides; with so much doubling, it's difficult to play favorites."
Theatre Reviews Limited - Recommended
"I thoroughly enjoyed this play. 'Oslo' tells the rather amazing backstory of the accords signed in 1993 by Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin...'Oslo' is pretty much what it sounds like: a lot of heady conversation and human fireworks. But there is also a good deal of humor. And, of course, history...Rogers has written excellent and timely dialogue...Some of the narration along the way could probably be excised, but it is handled with speed and precision."
The Clyde Fitch Report - Recommended
"Using not only imagined dialogue but incorporating what is already well-known about the accords, Rogers' drama certainly has a pungent air of verisimilitude...Everything that transpires in 'Oslo' is dramatic, but talky: don't let anyone argue that strict attention needn't be paid to every sentence uttered...In a work where performances are meant to be subservient to a broader purposes, the ensemble is flawless. Rogers' chief achievement is a beautifully balanced play."
WNBC - Recommended
"Playwright J.T. Rogers grasps the cynicism that crept back over the Middle East in the wake of multinational efforts to tamp down the decades-long conflict, and has crafted a play arguing that the storied agreement set events on a better course, even if it didn't generate the desired outcome...I never felt as if ‘Oslo' had a pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian political stance; that fact alone lends the story heft."
Woman Around Town - Highly Recommended
"In the course of three acts, we're made to feel like voyeurs, flies on the wall of a volatile narrative...The story illuminates a roster of galvanizing players...Every man is objectively depicted, his work and private selves played with specificity...Ensemble work is superb...Director Barlett Sher creates memorable stage images – allowing all three sections of audience sightline, enhances character with physicality, and paces the mercurial stop/start piece masterfully."
Bobs Theater Blog - Recommended
"Rogers is certainly not reluctant to take on complicated geopolitical topics...Now he is back with 'Oslo,' an ambitious look at the story behind the secret negotiations that led to the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords...The first act is intricately structured while the second act is more straightforward. The final act loses some steam in summarizing many of the events that have occurred since 1993...Be prepared to concentrate on a complex narrative for three hours."
NJ.com - Highly Recommended
"Manages a seemingly impossible feat: It transforms three hours of talk about the Oslo Accords into gripping and urgent entertainment...never once does any of this feel confusing or bloated. Instead Rogers shows us how historical change is, in effect, the accumulation of tiny details...This is how the sausage gets made, and ‘Oslo' makes that process thrilling to witness. Funny, too. Rogers has great fun with the absurdities of the scenario."
Front Mezz Junkies - Highly Recommended
"The kind of brilliant production that will leave you a teensy bit worse off than it found you...All because you will have spent three very extraordinary hours listening to a team of excellent actors spin the tale…Rogers' text and Sher's direction guide this extraordinary cast through a verbal and incident-packed obstacle course that, although we observers are removed by time and distance, is not only comprehensible, it is urgent and arresting. We not only understand, we feel."