“Tectonics shudder underneath Bayeza’s new play—slowly breaking open into those fabled dimensions. We register the cultural fallout of Till’s death through conflicts separately besetting a black couple and the white Bryant couple. No actor plays Till. No direct representation of him appears onstage. Instead, he becomes Carolyn’s ghost. He becomes the black couple’s crucible.” — Minnesota Monthly
“As “Benevolence” transitions to the second act, with Till’s murderers escaping justice, it’s impossible not to connect this crime to more recent killings of young black men such as Philando Castile and Trayvon Martin and wonder: Who, exactly, should be indicted? The killers? The system that created them? Do you go all the way back to the people who ripped Africans from their homes and sold them?” — Star Tribune
“Bayeza has written a powerful work of theater, whether considered as a pair of closely linked one-acts or a whole. The lessons from our past continue to send out tendrils that weigh upon our present. Painful as they may be to witness, the cost of not heeding those lessons is certainly far greater. benevolence is an essential addition to the documentation of and rumination on our bloody national narrative.” —Talkin’ Broadway