What the critics are saying, (lord help me)

For Kate’s performance as Myra Babbage in “Ghost-Writer” at Florida Stage by Michael Hollinger, directed by Lou Tyrell

Highlights: “rather too attractive” and a comparison to Ricardo Montalban!

‘Florida Stage, which specializes in new plays, has done this one proud. Ms. Norris is rather too attractive to look quite right as Myra, who really ought to be as plain as a post, but her acting is squarely on the mark—she's so tightly wrapped that she quivers… Mr. Hollinger is best known as the author of "Opus," a 2006 play about the members of a string quartet that has been produced all over America in recent seasons. "Ghost-Writer" will more than likely share that happy fate, for it is a finely wrought piece of entertainment that does just what it sets out to do.”

---Terry Teachout – Wall Street Journal

“As Myra, Kate Eastwood Norris has the audience mesmerized from her opening, carefully worded and spoken, monologue. Deliberate in her delivery, yet firm in her secretarial knowledge, Norris’ tug-of-war with Woolsey over the use of a semicolon vs. a period is deliciously droll. She knows her place, rarely raises her voice, but her disdainful facial expressions are priceless.”

---Hap Erstein – Florida Weekly

“Have you ever sat in a theater audience absolutely mesmerized by what's happening on stage and yet, there's no action, just fantastic dialog and acting? I once saw Richard Montalban at the old Royal Poinciana Theatre in Palm Beach in" Don Juan in Hell". He just sat on a high stool through out most of the performance and blew the audience away with the sheer power of his performance. I make this comparison as I review the Florida Stage latest new show. It's called" The Ghost- Writer." It was written by the award winning playwright, Michael Hollinger, who also wrote Opus, Red Herring and Incorruptible. His words are beautiful, humorous and understated. The cast is also beautiful, humorous and understated. In fact, the lead actress, Kate Eastwood Norris as Myra Babbage is amazing. With just a raised eyebrow, a tilt of the head or a flip of her hand, she manages to convey volumes. This could be filmed exactly as it is.”

---JT Davisson – Curtain Up

For the role of Isabell Hewlett in the world premiere of "Strange Devices From The Distant West" by Naomi Iizuka, directed by Les Waters at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in Berkeley, CA

Highlight: "the epitome of prim"

"The mystery at the heart of the play begins in the late 1800s in Yokohama as an Englishwoman named Isabel Hewlett (the magnetic Kate Eastwood Norris) makes her first visit to Japan. Outwardly the epitome of prim with her Victorian bustle and parasol, Isabel finds herself inexplicably drawn to a universe she finds as erotic as it is foreign. She stumbles on a photographer's studio in the red-light district where she's hypnotized by portraits of rickshaw drivers, monks and geishas...While her priggish husband Edmund (Danny Wolohan) disdains everything about the East, Isabel is mesmerized. She happily sheds her old life, her old identity, as if it were an umbrella on a sunny day"---Karen D’Souza – San Jose Mercury News

"Prolific scribe Naomi Iizuka's latest, "Concerning Strange Devices From the Distant West," packs much food for thought into 95 intermission-less minutes: meditations on Japanese-U.S. culture clash, mutual attraction and stereotyping, the ambiguities of photography as art form and documentation, plus narrative mysteries spanning nearly 150 years.... Expertly directed by Les Waters, this is a delicate yet piquant evening likely to do some traveling of its own." --- Dennis Harvey- Variety

"Waters' direction, as always, is sparing and top-notch. Kate Eastwood Norris, whose monologues bookend the piece, does a terrific job of winning over the audience with charm and timing…"---Jay Barmann - SFist

For Eleanor and Esme in Tom Stoppard's Rock & Roll directed by Blanka Zizka at The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia - Sept/Oct 2008

…We also meet Max (David Chandler), a passionate communist forever defending his ideals, wife Eleanor (the truly amazing Kate Eastwood Norris) Eleanor's struggle with breast cancer in Norris' powerfully painful portrayal…Stoppard mixes all this and more, breaking through the details of two decades to connect people and ideas in a poetic finale reminiscent of his heady-yet-heartfelt Arcadia, but with rock 'n' roll flair. Governments and philosophies come and go, but nothing crushes the human spirit. Rock on, people. - by Mark Cofta - Philadelphia City Paper

Kate Eastwood Norris gives every dimension to Eleanor and later, doubling as the daughter Esme, she plays subtlety in a very different key. Together it is one of the best performances of the year.- by The Edge's –Lewis Whittington

Kate Eastwood Norris in a tremendous performance wages a battle with cancer.-by Philadelphia Weekly's J. Cooper Robb

Meanwhile, back in England, Max's wife, Eleanor, Kate Eastwood Norris, a classics professor, is dying of cancer…by Act 2, Esme (Norris) has a teenage daughter of her own ...(a) terrific performance...-by Toby Zinman - The Philadelphia Inquirer

Kate Eastwood Norris gives a tour de force performance as both the rigid, dying Eleanor and the sympathetic, but lost daughter, Esme. When Eleanor rends her garments to reveal her cancer ridden body it brought me to tears. This is in spite of the fact that the bald cap she was wearing was too large, having to encapsulate all of her lovely hair for when she plays the daughter. But it didn't matter. She got Eleanor and she got me.-by Claudia Perry – Aisle Say, PA

The production has a swift pacing, spare attractive turntable stage, little sentiment. As frequent with its creator, Stoppard's women carry the play's heart.   Max's materialism is challenged by his cancer-ridden wife in the most powerful scene. She is the very gifted Kate Eastwood Norris, who later doubles as her own daughter.-by WRTI's Lesley Valdez

Zizka capitalized on the play’s humor and intergenerational family relationships to integrate the big ideas into the lives of the characters and find an emotional depth that the Broadway production lacked. (Marx, for all his talk about “praxis,” would have been proud). The intimacy of the Wilma’s smaller stage helped, and Norris’s heart-wrenching performance as Eleanor showed that human passions, like Eros, “don’t fit nicely into a system.” Between Norris and Zizka, they even managed to make Stoppard’s otherwise obtuse discussions of cognitive science seem plausible. -by Jim Rutter – Broad Street Review

The Philadelphia theater season has begun with a remarkable set of shows, all of which I've seen merit praise and audience attendance. One of these show, Tom Stoppard's "Rock 'N' Roll," currently at the Wilma Theatre, features a character, played with honesty and intensity by Kate Eastwood Norris, who has breast cancer and talks about her disease, and her place as an individual person who wants and needs personal attention and affection in the midst of controversies about politics and the translation of poetry. Norris is splendid in expressing, intellectually and emotionally, the basic truth, that people come first and should be valued for who they are and what they've accomplished while they have the time who earn and appreciate the attention. Norris' moving performing puts breast cancer, the fighting of a disease, and the unfortunate moment when one knows it might or will be terminal, into striking human perspective.- by Neal Zoren – Delaware County Times

For Lady Teazle in The School For Scandal directed by Richard Clifford at the Folger Theatre – May/June 2008

As the singularly self-absorbed Lady Teazle, Norris gets some of the best lines, and delivers them with accustomed aplomb.---Peter Marks – Washington Post

Norris, who recently received her second Helen Hayes Award in two years, succeeds in making her character's witty remarks and occasional physical gags seem effortless.---Susan Berlin – Talkin’ Broadway.com

For Lady Macbeth in Macbeth directed by Aaron Posner and Teller at Two River Theatre, NJ and Folger Theatre, DC – Jan-April 2008

Ms. Norris, a Washington-based regional-theater actress whose work I mean to follow from now on, plays Lady Macbeth not as a harpy à la Bette Davis but as a wholly believable woman lured astray by the siren song of ambition.---Terry Teachout – The Wall Street Journal

Norris is a convincing study of rapaciousness and guilt whose frail moments are also staged with sensitivity. ---Paul Harris- Variety

These Macbeths are quite a couple, and Ian Merrill Peakes and Kate Eastwood Norris do justice to the unjust two-some. Their love scenes are erotic, and their fights are physical. Neither he nor she is above slamming the other against a door when anger invades the soul...Given that Lady Macbeth is the smarter of the two, Norris matter-of-factly delivers the specifics of her murderous plan while Peakes squints in confusion. Norris excels as the woman behind the man who's always one step ahead of him. After the first murder, he's appalled by the blood, while she's intoxicated by it. Norris is hardly the battle-axe that many a Lady Macbeth has routinely been in other productions. She's a cool, sleek honey blonde. That she seems so elegant makes matters worse, because she appears to be a noble woman who should know better.---Peter Filichia – NJ Star Ledger

For Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing directed by Kim Rubenstein at Shakespeare Santa Cruz – summer - 2007

…one of the flirtiest Beatrice and Benedicks ever to coo and spar… Kate Eastwood Norris turns Beatrice into a proto-Carrie Bradshaw, a woman too smart and sexy to need a man to complete her (she's gutsy enough to sit at a table by herself at the masked ball), but unable to fight her yearning for Benedick---Karen D’Souza - San Jose Mercury News

Kate Eastwood Norris as Beatrice and Ian Merrill Peakes as Benedick open new windows to the inner life of their characters. These athletic actors risk not allowing the brilliance of their barbed repartee to govern their choices. As a result Benedick and Beatrice come alive as fully human. We envy their devastating facility at verbal jousting, but we also seee how their mocking masks their vulnerabilities and costs them the very thing thay both so much desire.--- Mark Bradlyn - Santa Cruz Sentinel

For Widow Quin in Playboy of the Western World directed by Bob Moss at Shakespeare Santa Cruz – summer - 2007

…the finely nuanced performance of Kate Eastwood Norris in the complex and difficult role of the Widow Quin …superb --- Philip Slater - Santa Cruz Sentinel

For Kay Fein and Jayne Summerhouse in She Stoops To Comedy by David Greenspan at Woolly Mammoth in March and April 2007 – directed by Howard Shalwitz earning Kate her second Helen Hayes Award

Around a king-sized bed onstage…Norris flings accusations and wounded looks. At, er, Norris. Back and forth she goes, flipping from actress Jayne to designer Kay and well nigh nailing the illusion of a verbal brawl between two worthy opponents….splendid... --- Peter Marks – The Washington Post

This is the funniest performance from Kate Eastwood Norris since, well – since the last time she was on a stage. This woman makes unfunny funny, but that isn’t a skill she needs here. Here, she has material worthy of her talents and she makes the most of it. Reviewers often refer to musical theatre performers who can “stop the show” with a fabulous song…but when is the last time you’ve seen someone stop a show without a song? Norris accomplishes this with a crystal clear comic dialogue with herself that has her twisting and turning at top speed, creating both sides of a conversation with such clarity that no one in the audience doubted which character said what, while, at the same time, providing “herself” with both the set ups and the punch lines for a series of gags that builds to a wonderful theatrical climax. --- Brad Hathaway – Potomac Stages

For Kari in The Pavilion, by Craig Wright at Two River Theatre in NJ, directed by Aaron Posner – winter’ 06

Kari is tenderly played by Kate Eastwood Norris as a woman determined to cope. With her face frozen in a wan smile of regret, she clutches her sweater closed as though trying to hide her broken heart. Still working at the bank, down in the basement among the safe-deposit boxes, and still married to Hans, the local golf pro who rescued her in her time of need, she hates golf almost as much as she despises the memory of Peter and their unborn child.--- Naomi Siegel - NY Times

Kari, whose marriage to the local golf pro prompts a highly humorous and supremely sad anecdote, does an abrupt one-eighty, and Ms. Norris handles it smoothly. You believe it. In fact, you believe everything about this strong, gentle, intelligent survivor – and that’s really good acting. …and oh, yes, enriched by Kate Eastwood Norris’s definitive Kari, (Aaron Posner’s) Two River directorial debut is a success.---Philip Dorian - The Two River Times

---For Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Folger Theatre, Washington DC -Oct/Nov ‘06 directed by Joe Banno, earning Kate a Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress

Highlight: "Norris would have rendered Puck convincingly as a toaster oven and afterward, served us all grilled cheese sandwiches"

John Huston once suggested that 99% of directing is casting.if so, Mr. Banno may have achieved 99% of his 99% with his inspired choice of the fabulous Kate Eastwod Norris as Puck. Puck is manic, but Norris paints the whole auditorium with joy; Puck is mischievious, but Norris makes us all co-conspirators in a never-ending adventure of love. Norris is, indeed, so versatile that had Banno chosen to lodge Dream in a shop selling kitchen appliances instead of in the 1930’s, Norris would have rendered Puck convincingly as a toaster oven, and afterward served us all grilled cheese sandwiches. ---Tim Treanor – DC Theatre Review

---For Rosalind in As You Like It and Goneril in King Lear at Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA – summer of 2006 directed by Aaron Posner and Skip Greer, respectively

Norris is a delightful Rosalind, drawing us in to share her fear of the unknown…the forbidden fruit titillation at the idea of Rosalind disguising herself as a man (she’s a lovely, lanky, tentative youth) nicely prepares the way for the sexual-tension comedy of her mock-wooing scenes with the unsuspecting Orlando…a radiant cowgirl…---Robert Hurwitt – San Francisco Chronical

Kate Eastwood Norris shines as the ruthless Goneril, the most monstrous of Lear’s daughters, always scheming, always ready to strike.--- Karen D’Souza – San Jose Mercury News