SINNERS
by Joshua Sobol, Directed by Brian Cox
“Overall Nicole Ansari’s potent performance of Layla is the highlight, she carries the show with her passion and uncompromising individuality. These ‘sinners’ chose to rebel, to turn desire into action and to seize their chance of happiness. Layla’s refusal to regret that choice as she finally declares, “you can never cross the same river twice”, is her ultimate triumph over the patriarchal regime. “Sinners” is an intense and insightful exploration into how our bodies still define and confine us in today’s world.- Despite her desperate situation, Layla runs the show at every turn. She dictates the tone, which judders from flippant to sexy to despairing to raging, as the two lovers woozily remember their past and flinch at their future. Ansari’s voice remains clear and strong throughout – always the teacher to her young student, despite the extraordinary circumstances.”
full review: the guardian
“Nicole Ansari gives a powerful performance that matches a powerful role – made even more impressive by the fact that she has no use of her torso below the breasts – she carries her performance with her voice, her face, and the tilt and torsion of her neck and head.”
full review: the arts fuse
Playground Theatre | London, UK
New Rep | Boston, MA, USA
Mirror Theater | Vermont, USA
“Ansari is magnetic, expressing both Layla’s straight-backed pride and her obviously tortuous and tragic circumstances. ”
full review: the reviews hub
“Ansari does an impressive job of vocally showing Layla’s range; one minute she is a seductress capable of bringing Nur to orgasm with words alone and the next she begs him to kill her. Her intense stares and commanding speeches create a powerful woman, yet there’s an equal sense of her teetering on the edge of desperation.”
full review: the arts desk
Waterwell Theater at HERE Arts | New York City
more on SINNERS:
“There are also striking contributions by Nicole Ansari as an Iranian immigrant who suspects Linda of cutting a side deal for herself.”
7 MINUTES
by Stephano Massini, Director: Mei Ann Teo
full review: lighting and sound america
As the worker formerly from Iran, Nicole Ansari gives a very moving speech about living under fear and a fight for survival.
full review: TheaterScene.net
I AM ANTIGONE
SON OF THE SOUTH
“One of Bob’s professors (Nicole Ansari-Cox), a German émigré who pointedly references her witnessing of Nazi brutality, strongly advises him to avoid a potentially combustible situation. Indeed, even Abernathy tells the wide-eyed white boy that, hey, he might not know what he’s in for.”
“Perhaps immigrants like Leyla (Layla Khoshnoudi) and Mahtab (Nicole Ansari). The latter delivers the most exhilarating speech of the play, one-upping Marshall-Oliver in terms of calmly articulated devastation. Mahtab is originally from Iran, and her formative experience in a country whose liberal revolution ceded to theocracy has left her unable to trust. How can she know that rejecting these generous terms won’t give the suits a pretext to offer worse ones? Her fear is well-founded: The population grows larger; the means of production become ever more efficient; and foreign labor is plentiful and consistently cheaper.”
full review: theater mania
“From the underground tomb where her uncle Creon, the king, believes her to have been buried alive, and across more than two millennia of human history, Antigone (played skilfully by Nicole Ansari) narrates her tale; a tale previously told almost exclusively by men. With the aid of a well-choreographed chorus of performers, we learn about her inauspicious beginnings as the daughter of Oedipus and his mother Jocasta.”
full review: the reviews hub
full review: variety
DAYBREAK by Joyce Van Dyke, directed by Lucie Tiberghien
“Kudos to the Pan Asian Repertory Theatre for stepping outside their boundaries and casting the remarkable Nicole Ansari, whose layered performance takes us on this fascinating journey. Ansari portrays Victoria from teens to old age, brilliantly allowing us into her character’s despair, humor, and strength.”
review: Blumenthal, directed by Seth Fisher
“The lovely Nicole Ansari (the real-life Mrs. Cox) as a mystery woman who had her own complex relationship to the late writer and his work. She holds the screen with a grace and poignancy that suggests something no other character quite seems to possess: an inner life.”
Romy, Me by Nicole Ansari and Jale Maria Gönenç
“Nicole Ansari bewitches in the Public Theatre show “Romy, me” in the allure of the great Romy Schneider.”
“Expressive in voice and performance, Ansari manages to bewitch the Audience for an hour with great self assurance.”
“Nicole Ansari changes Characters with eloquence, shows deep signs of fear, mourning and loneliness in her beautiful face, and that with great passioon for the Theatre.”
“Nicole Ansari succeeds visually and in her acting to make us remember the fascinating woman that was Romy Schneider.”
Nicole Ansari also acts as co-author in “Romy, me” and this transformable actress has starred in several productions at the Public Theatre as well as enriching upscale Austrian TV productions ( e.g., as the title heroine Alma, in the Three part Mini series for Arte)
Cyrano de Bergerac by Rostand, directed by Michael Schottenberg
“With romanesque features Nicole Ansari delights as Roxane in this moving play.”
“Nicole Ansari understands the refinement of feeling. Her mouth, her walk, her eyes talk French.”
“Nicole Ansari plays Roxane, who after her remarkable performance in Sobol’s “Alma”, graces the Stage of the Public Theatre for the first time.Her Roxane is a strange Art figure, who sometimes seems naive or even dumb and then turns around on a dime and gets excited about poetry. There is something enigmatic, undecipherable in her presentation. that is irritating, but leaves no one cold.”
“With subtle emotionality, Nicole Ansari plays Roxane, a graceful woman who lets herself be bewitched by poetry.”
Alma, written by Joshua Sobol, directed by Paulus Manker
“Nicole Ansari is beautifully present as Alma Mahler- Die Presse”