lyttelton theatre At the national Theatre

Doctor Who’s Ncuti Gatwa and Sharon D Clarke impress

Director Max Webster has taken Oscar Wilde’s familiar text by the scruff of the neck (or maybe some other part of the anatomy) and overlaid it with a panto style gay party. Many critics loved it, some had reservations, but all agreed on the quality of the acting by Ncuti Gatwa, Hugh Skinner and Sharon D Clarke, and the bright set and costumes by Rae Smith.

[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]

Most enthusiastic was Marianka Swain for LondonTheatre (5★): ‘Max Webster’s revival isn’t just vibrant, joyous and triumphantly queer, it’s also a thoughtful reclamation of a play that has become far too cosy, matching Wilde’s subversive spirit in every bold creative choice.’ About the stars, she said, ‘Gatwa wonderfully reinvigorates familiar lines with his breezy spontaneity and flirtatious charisma, while Hugh Skinner, who sports a bouffant hairdo and elaborate moustache, turns the staid character of Jack/Ernest into a hilarious indignant fop’ and ‘Clarke gives her Lady Bracknell an understated but utterly devastating disdain.’ She ended, ‘This is where you’ll find pure magic theatre this Christmas.’

The Times‘ Clive Davis (4★) advised, ‘Think of it as adult panto. Max Webster’s bold and brash reboot of Oscar Wilde’s comedy rattles along with the help of oodles of camp and performances which, apart from Sharon D Clarke’s Jamaican-accented Lady Bracknell, are all nudge-nudge, wink-wink.’ He cautioned, ‘the hilarity becomes a tad gruelling…you wonder if the director is throwing everything at the audience and hoping for the best. When it works, though, it’s a joy.’

The Guardian‘s Arifa Akbar (4★) was a fan: ‘there is an elegance to the nudge-wink references and it is a production with just the right amount of delightful mischief….The pace never becoming hectic, the physical comedy steers clear of farce and lines are crisply delivered without hamming up.’ She enjoyed the performances of the leads: ‘The current Doctor Who Gatwa brings arch shades of his character in Sex Education to the part while Skinner excels in balancing emotional vulnerability with archness and physical humour…Perhaps best of all, Sharon D Clarke’s Lady Bracknell is an exquisitely dressed battle-axe’.

Alice Saville in The Independent (4★) was delighted with the production: ‘director Max Webster’s bold, brash and beautifully cast production blows away every trace of wink-wink nudge-nudge subtlety from this classic’. Howver she noted, ‘when you turn the subtext into text, you’re left with nothing below the surface, and sometimes proceedings here slip into the territory of an especially brainless panto.’ She concluded, ‘What lingers here are the images, more than the words – perhaps because Wilde’s famous aphorisms sound especially glib when delivered with vigour, rather than their more usual laconic detachment.’ She liked the stars: ‘Ncuti Gatwa plays a gorgeously flamboyant Algernon who peacocks in silk corsets and ruffled negligees between scenes. And Sharon D Clarke shines as his formidable aunt Lady Bracknell’.

Time Out‘s Andrzej Lukowksi (4★) decided, ‘if the leads are written as subtextually queer, then Webster’s approach is essentially to crank up the subtext to 11 and not worry about every aspect of internal logic so long as we’re having a good time.’ About the actors, he said, ‘Gatwa is supremely enjoyable as agent of chaos Algy, but it’s full of standout turns: I loved the great Sharon D Clarke as a twinkly, pragmatic Caribbean-accented Lady Bracknell and (Eliza) Scanlen as a somewhat feral Cecily.’

The Standard’s Nick Curtis (4) talked about ‘Max Webster’s fizzing, knockabout production’ that ‘tips the text’s implicit gayness into a heavier display of sexual fluidity.’ He explained ‘I loved it because it honours Wilde’s wit but also his radicalism and his embrace of artifice.’ He said Ncuti Gatwa is ‘charming and charismatic as the preening sybarite, tossing off witticisms as if they’re going out of fashion.’

Fiona Mountford in the i (4★) reassured, ‘None of this re-interpretation is laid on too thickly.’ She said, ‘The sparkling artificiality of Wilde’s confection is playfully emphasised’ and concluded with the conclusion of the evening, ‘The curtain call is a riot of flamboyant costumes, more glittery and colourful than any pantomime. This is a big success, oh yes it is.’

The Observer‘s Susannah Clapp (4★) commented, ‘I would have thought that crashing in and out of convention, underlining the risqué, would crush Wilde’s celebrated witticisms. Actually, it releases them. Lines are delivered not archly but with ease.’

Dominic Cavendish in the Telegraph (3★) thought ‘There’s some straining after laughter, albeit it is often obtained.’ He declared, ‘the main plaudits should go to Sharon D Clarke’s sedate, imperious, fabulously attired Lady Bracknell’.

Sarah Crompton in Whats On Stage (3★) had reservations: ‘It’s panto season at the National Theatre. Max Webster’s production of Oscar Wilde’s most famous play is colourful, cross-dressing, brash and often very funny. The trouble is that the importance of its author sometimes vanishes in the mayhem…. The text seems less important than accommodating the next bum joke, or a slip on some fake grass…Wilde should seem effortless but here there’s a terrible sense of trying hard’. Sharon D Clarke, she said, ‘is utterly wonderful, turning the character into a disdainfully magnificent matriarch, contempt for the world and its imperfections dripping from every line.’

Sam Marlowe in The Stage (3) put aside her reservations: ‘there’s so much fizz and sparkle in the staging, and such charm, cheek and flair from the cast, that we’re consistently tickled and ultimately won over.’

Critics’ Average Rating 3.8★

Value Rating 48 (Value rating is the Average Critic Rating divided by the typical ticket price)

The  Importance of Being Earnest is at the National Theatre until 25 January 2025. Tickets from nationaltheatre.org.uk

Read Paul Seven Lewis’ less than enthusiastic review here

If you’ve seen The  Importance of Being Earnest at the National Theatre, please add your review and rating below 

Is it Merry Christmas or Humbug for this year’s star?

The Old Vic

The Old Vic’s uplifting production of A Christmas Carol, written by Jack Thorne and directed by Matthew Warchus, is an annual event beloved by audiences. Each year a different star name plays Scrooge  This year it’s John Simm’s turn. The majority of critics praised his performance although there were some dissenters. It’s hard not to be carried along by this joyous production, but one managed to resist its charms. At the time of writing, The Guardian, The Independent and Time Out have yet to weigh in. It’s possible they think a change of star is not enough reason to review what is essentially a repeat.

[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]

For Ben Dowell in The Times (5 ), ‘John Simm…shows brilliant range, encompassing moments of humour.’ He declared, ‘The designer Rob Howell’s stage remains a glory, bisecting and eventually uniting his audience when the ensemble teem in the stalls; when his door frames rise up to admit the fantastically earthy female ghosts we are reminded that they are the portals with which Scrooge has shut out not just the carollers but the world and the possibility of love and companionship.’

Aliya Al-Hassan for Broadway World (5★) declared: ‘This exceptional version of A Christmas Carol remains a magical festive experience.’ She praised the latest Scrooge: ‘Simm… brings a sardonic and acerbic level of humour not seen in the role before and this gives more levity to the show overall.’

The Standard‘s Nick Curtis (4★) felt John Simm ‘brings a gruff, grizzled vigour to the miser and he doesn’t mind being dislikeable’. He pointed out that ‘Underlying all the razzmatazz is Thorne’s intensely humane communion with Dickens’s moral agenda.’

Olivia Rook for LondonTheatre (4 ) praised the writer for the show’s perennial success: ‘Thorne…creates a…sense of magic and spectacle’ and this year’s star: ‘Simm’s classic Scrooge is proud, impatient, and pompous, prone to bellowing at those around him.’

Not all the critics were taken with John Simm’s version of Scrooge. Fiona Mountford in the i (3★) said, ‘the trajectory that Simm traces is far more perfunctory’ (than 2023’s Christopher Ecclestone). She did however bring attention to the contribution made by the music: ‘The great delight of this production (apart from free mince pies pre-show) is the music; composer and arranger Christopher Nightingale truly offers the gift that keeps on giving even after eight years.’

While affirming that the show ‘has the allure of an essential ritual’, Dominic Cavendish in the Telegraph (3★) complained that he ‘inclines too much too soon towards straightforwardness of temperament’. He explained that he ‘more conjures a peevish loner in a midlife crisis than an icy curmudgeon in mortal fear.’

One of the strange things about being a reviewer is that you sometimes are obliged to go to a show you never would have chosen to see. Take Aleks Sierz, reviewing for The Arts Desk (3★). He admits, ‘a crowd-pleasing evening really does depend on you wanting to be part of the crowd — and at this time of year I really don’t.’ No surprise then that he went full Humbug and declared, ‘Populism rules’. For him,  ‘Everything is spelled out for the audience, every bit of charity talk is repeated so that even the slowest mind can grasp it — there is no subtext, no subtlety, no poetry.’

Critics’ Average Rating 3.9★

Value Rating 43 (Value rating is the Average Critic Rating divided by the typical ticket price)

A Christmas Carol is at the Old Vic Theatre, London, until 4 January 2025.  Buy tickets directly

If you’ve seen A Christmas Carol at the Old Vic Theatre, please add your review and rating below 

Duke of York’s Theatre

Lily Collins, star of the Netflix hit Emily In Paris, makes her stage debut in a twisty story of a drunken encounter between a naive young American woman and a older cultured European played by Alvaro Morte. The stars involved were given a pass by the critics but many failed Bess Wohl‘s play which was seen as contrived. Ms Collins’ debut was well received. Despite two high-scores, the four two star reviews brought the average rating down to one of the worst this year.

[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]

Fiona Mountford in i-news (5★) was in no doubt about its quality: ‘These are among the best 90 minutes of theatre I have seen all year’. She continued, ‘Barcelona works splendidly because every element is akin to peeling the layers of a very large onion. Frankie Bradshaw’s design, chic and bijou on the surface, begins to offer unsettling clues the longer we study it. Director Lynette Linton is at the top of her game’. She praised the star of Emily In Paris: ‘This is a remarkable stage debut from Collins, conveying a fascinating blend of interlayered weakness and strength.’

Sarah Crompton from WhatsOnStage (4★) also liked it: ‘It’s a strangely old-fashioned concoction, not at all earth-shattering or ground-breaking, not always as truthful as it wants to be, or as revelatory as it hopes, yet always engrossing and warm-hearted. A gentle pleasure.’ Referring to the stars, she said, ‘Both have real charisma’.

The Telegraph‘s Claire Allfree (3★) described it as ‘both flimsy and dated and predominately a vehicle for Lily Collins’. However the vehicle carried the star through the evening: ‘Collins really is good as Irene, radiating effervescent naivety and as giddy as a pony while finding the vulnerability in a sheltered 35-year-old who has never found the strength to challenge her own life choices.’ Olivia Rook at LondonTheatre (3★) commented, ‘Wohl’s play truly sings when she hits us with some big revelations and these two strangers are shown not to be so dissimilar after all’.

Although Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times (3★)said, ‘this feels like a curiously flimsy affair’, she did praise the leads: ‘The performances  are compelling… Collins, in her stage debut, is a mercurial figure, zigzagging about like a butterfly, both physically and emotionally.’ Despite describing The Standard‘s Nick Curtis (3★) described Lily Collins as ‘sensational’ and praised her ‘presence and timing’. But he was disappointed to find her and her co-star ‘stuck in a phony emotional rollercoaster’.

The Guardian‘s Arifa Akbar (2★) gave the leads lukewarm praise: ‘While the performances are agreeable, it is hard to invest in either character’ and more generally ‘Given the considerable creative talent involved, this is a curiously flat affair’.  She came down hard on the director: ‘in Lynette Linton’s production neither the suspense nor the humour hit home, the mix often more awkward than unsettling.’ She concluded it was ‘a production that carries its own what-might-have-been disappointment’.

In The Stage (2★), an exasperated Tom Wicker declared, ‘this is an infuriating play. It’s packed with plot contrivances that see it spinning its wheels to audience patience-testing effect, in service of a final-act reveal.’

Annabel Nugent at The Independent (2★) was scathing, ‘The play’s themes of suicide and grief are tried-and-true shortcuts to the heartstrings. And yet here, it never quite locates them. Moments intended as gut punches land with a feather-light touch; monologues are heavy in exposition but lacking in the requisite emotional scaffolding to support them.’

Clive Davis from The Times (2★) kept up his record as the most frequent dispenser of 2 star reviews. Saying the play ‘seems suspended in a land of make-believe’, he went on to comment, ‘this late-night encounter between two strangers is so schematic that its musings on life, death and love seldom ring true.’ The Observer’s Susannah Clapp (2★) was dismissive: ‘the range of feeling remains small: from giggle to whimper.’

No star rating was attached to the review by Time Out’s Andrjez Lukowksi. Given his comments, this may not be an oversight: ‘Really it’s just not good enough – everyone here has the capacity to make work better than Barcelona, so exactly why they’ve settled on a formulaic two-hander that doesn’t even feel written for a British audience is beyond me.’

Critics’ Average Rating 2.6★

Value Rating 27 (Value rating is the Average Critic Rating divided by the typical ticket price)

Barcelona is at the Duke of York’s Theatre, London, until 11 January 2025.  Buy tickets directly

If you’ve seen Barcelona at the Duke of York’s Theatre, please add your review and rating below

Noel Coward Theatre

Steve Coogan triumphed as four different characters but for many critics, the show didn’t quite take off. Although acknowledged as funny, the script by Armando Iannucci and Sean Foley was criticised by some for being lightweight and timid. The large-scale show is  based on Stanley Kubrick’s 1984 satirical film about war-hungry Americans on the brink of nuclear war. Inevitably many of the critics referred to the beloved original in detail and were disappointed that the stage version was different to the original film.

[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]

Broadway World’s Gary Naylor (5★) praised the adaptors for their decision not to update the story but rather ‘to recreate the movie on stage. That may be a safer creative choice… but the raw material is so very strong that its power is barely diminished 60 years on.’ He underestimated his fellow critics’ capacity to find fault when he said this choice will offer ‘fewer opportunities for disappointed diehard fans to kvetch or identify the instances when the jokes were not as good’. He was in awe of the star: ‘Coogan’s energy is astonishing … he draws on every element of his comic heritage from voices, to pratfalls, to character work, to farce’. He pointed out, ‘There’s wonderful work wherever you look on stage. Giles Terera holds General Turgidson’s bloodlust in check just sufficiently to avoid toppling into caricature, his eyes worth the ticket price alone (some of it at least).’

Marianka Swain reviewing for London Theatre (4★) found the show ‘explosively funny’. She appreciated ‘the tone of Foley’s assured production, which easily flips between Airplane!-style genre-busting farce and alarmingly resonant commentary on humanity’s reckless self-destructiveness.’ Of Steve Coogan, she said, ‘the real treat is his white-haired, wildly camp, extravagantly accented former-Nazi scientist Dr Strangelove…It’s absolutely hysterical.’

Neil Norman in the Express (4★) declared, ‘Sean Foley maintains the tension and the comedy throughout with remarkable nimbleness’. He praised Hildegard Bechtler’s design: ‘Best of all, the arrival of a B-52 bomber that noses its way onto the stage against a video backdrop of clouds is genuinely impressive.’   ‘But,’ he concluded, ‘it’s Coogan’s triumph’.

The Stage’s Dave Fargnoli (4★)was impressed: ‘Iannucci and Foley retain the film’s subversive spirit, but downplay its nihilism, juxtaposing gloriously silly punchlines with a building sense of unease’. As for the star: ‘Coogan displays boundless energy and impeccable comic timing.’ He also praised ‘Hildegard Bechtler’s unfussy, impactful sets’ and ‘Giles Terera channels a fascinatingly chaotic energy’.

Alice Saville in The Independent (3★) thought it was ‘a lovable but overly reverential approach to a film classic’. Despite criticising the production’s timidity, she found the humour ‘evergreen, prickling with ingenious wordplay and sickly surrealism’.

Sarah Crompton at WhatsOnStage (3★) also found it timid: ‘It’s entertaining but never quite as savage as you expect.’ She found ‘there’s something strangely effortful about this adaptation’. However, ‘It’s hard to fault either the comic virtuosity of Steve Coogan’ and ‘Foley’s direction keeps up the hysterical pace’.

Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out (3★) found, ‘For the most part it’s funny because it’s very cognisant of why the film was funny – the dialogue is relentlessly amusing, and the characters are a dream.’ He continued, ‘it’s a slick stage tribute to a beloved 70-year-old movie that captures the reasons why it was a hit but less so the reasons why it’s a masterpiece.’

The Guardian’s Arifa Akbar (3★) was moderately enthusiastic: ‘if this show is anything, it is fun. And Coogan fans most certainly get bang for their buck.’

The Times’ Clive Davis (3★) called the production ‘stolid’  and ‘a decent star vehicle for Steve Coogan’. For Rachel Halliburton at The Arts Desk (3★) ‘the humour doesn’t always detonate in the way it should’.

Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times (3★) felt ‘the satire doesn’t bite as it might and the comedy sometimes feels rather effortful, as if the company felt the need to push it’. She wondered if ‘a slightly more maverick, shoestring approach — something along the lines of Operation Mincemeat — might have given the staging a little more sting.’

One of the most damning reviews came from the Telegraph’s Claire Allfree (2★). She found it ‘trapped between the film’s formidable legacy and an inability to recreate it anew theatrically.’ She said it ‘serves up a knockabout production marked by a contrasting refusal to take its subject seriously. With Coogan on full power, this is not necessarily always a problem.’ She specified, ‘Hildegard Bechtler’s set exemplifies the problem – there’s the odd nod to the original, notably the War Room’s circular overhead light, but it settles mainly for perfunctory designs in regulation 1960s grey‘. In conclusion, she said, ‘The laughter should come at sickening cost. Foley, by contrast, just wants you to have a good time.’

In the i (2★), Fiona Mountford also criticised the show’s lack of seriousness compared with the film: ‘Whereas Kubrick has pitch-black comedy intercutting a mood of gravitas, Foley unwisely has occasional serious moments raising their heads above cheap jokes’.

For Dominic Maxwell in The Sunday Times (2★) it was ‘a fatal jollying up of material that needs to be played in earnest’ even if ‘Coogan is never less than good’. The Observer‘s Susannah Clapp (2★) was disappointed: ‘Covetable comic talents have set themselves not to invent but to replicate. What a waste of imagination…This doesn’t look like a visionary glimpse at a future madness but a tepid cartoon of what is actually happening.’

Critics’ Average Rating 3.0★

Value Rating 33 (Value rating is the Average Critic Rating divided by the typical ticket price)

Dr Strangelove is at Noel Coward Theatre, until 25 January 2025 (then at Bord Gais Energy Theatre, Dublin, 5-22 February 2025). Buy tickets directly here.

Read Paul Seven’s 4 star review of Dr Strangelove here

If you’ve seen Dr Strangelove at the Noel Coward Theatre, please add your review and rating below