What Theatre Critics Have Said…
Thelma Theatre at Women’s Voices Theatre Festival
About Princess Margaret by Patricia Connelly
Elizabeth Bruce and Andrew White in "Princess Margaret" by Patricia Connelly.
Photo by Nicolas Ortega-Ward.
Princess Margaret, a world premiere by Thelma Theatre, is an intriguing new play about a Catholic school…It’s a meaty script bolstered by solid performances… Sister Anastasia (Elizabeth Bruce) represents the school of compassion and care…Bruce plays her role with sweetness and a certain solemn intelligence.
Jessica Vaughan
DC Metro Theatre Arts
The Women's Voices Theater Festival 'Princess Margaret' at The Thelma Theatre - DC Metro Theater Arts
“Sister Anastasia--an engaging Elizabeth Bruce--is so desperate for qualified teachers that she overlooks Sister Helen’s checkered track record at previous schools.”
Celia Wren
The Washington Post
Play explores when your soul mate isn’t your husband - The Washington Post
At Washington, D.C.’s Sanctuary Theatre, Inc.
About Bag Lady by Jean-Claude van Itallie
Elizabeth Bruce in "Bag Lady" by Jean-Claude van Itallie.
Photo by Sanctuary Theatre
“Elizabeth Bruce’s furious performance as Clara is phenomenal. She works herself into a captivating, breathless fury.”
Randy Shulman
The Hill Rag
“Sanctuary Founder Elizabeth Bruce is startling convincing in the part, as Clara shuttles rapidly between clarity and incoherence.”
Joe Brown
The Washington Post
“Bag Lady…focuses on Clara, the confused, angry, prideful and pathetic title character. Her speech is sometimes lucid, sometimes hallucinatory…. We learn about her unhappy childhood and an attempted rape as a teenager, the hospitals that felt to her like prisons, the gradual descent into alcoholism…The end result is a ground down soul, no longer a threat, just a social problem, a nuisance…Elizabeth Bruce manages the difficult acting task here quite admirably.”
Larry B. Puchall
The InTowner
“Bag Lady is…. a stream-of-consciousness narration of her life—from Nazi concentration camp to Hollywood to Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital---as she sits on a New York subway grated. The effect can be fascinating…Bruce does an admirable job.”
Kara Swisher
Washington City Paper
About Rupert’s Birthday by Ken Jenkins
“Elizabeth Bruce closes the evening with a wonderfully warm and moving monologue…that reaches back into the memory of a middle-aged eccentric to…when…she transformed from girl to woman. It is a fine, strong performance of a delicate memory piece.”
John Michael Sophos
The Washington Blade
“Gently entertaining…. Elizabeth Bruce plays Louisa May, a feisty spinster…and her monologue is a down-to-earth rumination on the mysteries of womanhood, birth, and the moment of death…. Rupert’s Birthday marks another step up for Sanctuary.”
Joe Brown
The Washington Post
Elizabeth Bruce and Laurie Mufson in "Wise Woman".
Photo by Sanctuary Theatre.
About Wise Woman by Robert Michael Oliver and Elizabeth Bruce
The Washington Ethical Society commissioned Sanctuary Theatre's Robert Michael Oliver and Elizabeth Bruce to devise and co-produce a play, “Wise Woman”—in collaboration with a cast of Sanctuary and WES actors—inspired by "The Lost Princess," a 19th century parable by George Macdonald.
About Win/Lose/Draw by Ara Watson and Mary Gallagher
“Sanctuary wins three in a row…. Sanctuary founder Elizabeth Bruce is distressingly convincing as the disheveled, bitter mother who lashes out with violence in her ignorance.”
Joe Brown
The Washington Post
About An Evening with Chekhov and Gorky
by Polish playwright Thaddeus Wittlin
“Elizabeth Bruce is wonderfully comedic as the delicate, unfaithful aristrocrat’s wife…especially…in her lip sync rendition of a Russian Ballad.”
Regina Moore
The New Observer
About The Tree Climber by Egyptian playwright
Tewfik al-Hakim
“Elizabeth Bruce gives a thoughtful performance.”
Linda Dubucet
“Audio Evidence” – WPFW-FM
At Denver’s Slightly Off-Center Theatre
About Stuck Inside of Lubbock by John Kaplan
“Stuck Inside of Lubbock is worth seeing, not for the band, but for the excellent performance of Elizabeth Bruce, who plays—with ease and spontaneity—a troubled but witty middle-aged mother, Natalie Malick, who is unable to cope with the trivial problems of modern life…Bruce’s portrayal clearly ranks her among the better actresses working in Denver.”
E.T. McClanahan
The Colorado Daily
“Lubbock becomes very decidedly a play about Natalie…played with violent, wrenching spasms of humor and grief by Elizabeth Bruce…. She epitomizes the too tightly wound woman unraveling.”
Barbara MacKay
The Denver Post
At Denver’s Rivertree Theatre
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” by Edward Albee
“His wife, Honey, is played by Elizabeth Bruce, who provides welcome contrast…Hers is a legitimate innocence, an honest simplicity which never breaks down. As the others grow increasingly bizarre, increasingly cruel, she merely becomes more and more confused…But Ms. Bruce isn’t a simpering, dumb Honey…She is funny in her confusion, keeping a balance between the humor and the pathos in the role, providing a dead weight, a control against the ugliness which keeps expanding until it seems the room and everyone in it will explode.”
Barbara MacKay
The Denver Post
About Our Town by Thorton Wilder
“The only regret is that Wilder didn’t expand the role of Mrs. Soames so we could have heard more or Elizabeth Bruce’s fluent jabberings and hushed gossiping.”
Sherri Langton
Spree
At Denver’s Theatre Under Glass
About Ah, Wilderness by Eugene O’Neill
“The two outstanding performances of the evening are given by Louis DePaemelere and Elizabeth Bruce as Uncle Sid and Aunt Lily…Bruce and DePaemelere work very well together. She gives a well-considered portrayal of a stern, silly, and very human woman.”
Dennis and Erica Stull
Straight Creek Journal
At UC Denver Theatre
About Verdict of the Wave by Alex Stoll
“Carla and her lover, Camilla…expertly played by Elizabeth Bruce…have thrown the fervor of a crusade into their performances.”
Jackie Campbell
Rocky Mountain News