Press
On Annapurna (2016):
“Burkhartsmeier is particularly moving as he breaks down both physically and emotionally over the course of the show. I’d like to nominate him for a Drammy, a BroadwayWorld Regional Theatre Award, and any other award available for one of the best performances I’ve ever seen.”
— Krista Garver BroadwayWorld
On A Skull in Connemara (2008):
“. . . it is Bruce Burkhartsmeier who makes “Skull” not just watchable but occasionally moving. His Mick is lumbering in movement but limber in conversation, as elusive about his true deeds as about his true emotions. Yet beneath his gruffness, sadness pokes through in unlikely moments (such as during a disgusting drunken discussion with Mairtin on the distinctions between ‘drowning on sick’ and ‘drowning on wee’), giving us a wounded heart to feel for amid all the petty recriminations and shattered bones.”
— Marty Hughley, The Oregonian
On Sweet and Sad (2013):
“Bruce Burkhartsmeier, as the charming, amnesia-addled uncle Benjamin, continues to dish the strongest humor, as well as the play’s most poignant exploration of memory.
— Aaron Scott, Portland Magazine
On Penelope (2013):
“. . . The comic aging, empty scholar Fitz (Burkhartsmeier) finds his tongue for a moment and describes the “little nothing” within himself so plaintively that even the remote Penelope is moved to pull back the curtain of her second floor window and express something like sorrow, maybe, or existential allegiance.”
— Barry Johnson, Oregon ArtsWatch
On Shining City (2008):
“John is played by Bruce Burkhartsmeier, once a Drammy-winning regular with Portland Rep and Artists Rep who hasn't performed in town for nearly five years. "Shining City" is worth attending at the very least, then, to welcome him back, because he's terrific here. He gives John the fidgety intensity of an awkward Everyman under stress -- swinging his knee as he sits, rubbing at his nose or his brow, and so forth. It never looks like gesture, though; rather, you'd swear it was the natural by-product of his roiling thoughts and emotions, starting to surface for the first time. His words, delivered with the muted lilt of a Dublin accent, often tumble out halfway between affable and agitated, and when he downshifts into the reverie of meeting a glamorous woman or bursts into full-on anger or grief, the effect is riveting.”
Marty Hughley, The Oregonian
On Angel Street (1995):
“. . . Burkhartsmeier, it must be said, hasn’t always had James Mason’s voice. In recent years he’s played upper-class Americans (Flan in “Six Degrees of Separation”), Chilean doctors (“Death and the Maiden”), and underclass Americans (Lee in “True West”), without a trace of Mason. In these roles, he’s shown a remarkable versatility, a stage sense that grows ever savvier, and a decisiveness that helps the other actors on stage.”
— Barry Johnson, The Oregonian