Best play in London?
Almeida Theatre / Ambassadors Theatre
There were four stars from many critics for Ava Pickett’s debut play, a product of the Almeida’s scheme to encourage new writing. Now, after a transfer to the West End and some minor alterations to the script, 5 star reviews dominate. The play imagines the devastating effect on the lives of three ordinary women when Henry VIII kills his wife Anne Boleyn. Modern parallels are inescapable when, throughout society, men are encouraged in their subjugation of women. Some reviews suggested it tailed off a little at the end, otherwise it was high praise for a funny, heartbreaking production directed by Lyndsey Turner and starring Tanya Reynolds, Siena Kelly and Liv Hill. All aspects of the production were praised including the set design by Max Jones and the lighting by Jack Knowles.
[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]
Reviews for the West End transfer
5 stars ⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑
Alex Wood at WhatsOnStage summed up: ‘This is a play about the trickle-down effect of misogyny and how political events can ripple through society – to impact everything from female friendship to economic survival. It’s not hard to see why it feels so stirringly pertinent.’ He noted: ‘Director Lyndsey Turner keeps the pace as lean and dangerous as Pickett’s bracingly good script (reportedly tweaked since its initial spell last year). The cast of five is exceptional’.
‘1536 is a once-in-a-blue-moon theatrical experience. I laughed. I cried. I probably could have screamed too’ said Isobel Lewis at Time Out.
Debbie Gilpin at BroadwayWorld agreed: ‘the audience goes through a whirlwind of emotions; from its giddy beginning where the laughs come thick and fast, to the all-too sobering ending that leaves you slack-jawed and on the edge of your seat’. She continued: ‘It gives women an authentic voice, as you really do recognise three normal people just talking to each other; it’s something that regularly gets overlooked, and highlights the importance of letting women tell their own stories’. She declared: ‘This is a play that we have been crying out for – and a true testament to what theatre can do.’
‘Believe the hype’ shouted The Standard’s Nick Curtis. ‘Ava Pickett’s debut play… is every bit as arresting and electrifying as it was at the Almeida last year. It’s transferred to the suitably intimate Ambassadors with the alchemically potent acting trio of Liv Hill, Siena Kelly and Tanya Reynolds intact’. He was pleased that ‘Director Lyndsey Turner again expertly navigates the script’s blend of sweary modern and archaic language and its swings from laugh-out-loud humour to sudden, chilling horror.’ Referring to the fact that Anna Pickett is turning 1536 into a TV series, he pleaded: ‘I urge you to see this story in the theatre where it’s thrillingly, coruscatingly alive.’
The Telegraph’s Dominic Cavendish recorded: ‘It moves apace from some of the freshest, funniest writing around to some of the most devastating, with nuanced performances to match.’ He went on: ‘Lyndsey Turner’s direction manages each beat of the action impeccably, assisted by a superb design, lighting included. The building momentum and deepening sophistication are perfectly judged, and the accusatory message about women’s constrained lives, then and now, emerges via consummate craft.’
4 stars ⭑ ⭑ ⭑ ⭑
The Times’ Dominic Maxwell: ‘Turner’s cast are stars in the making. Hill is a gentle presence as Jane, who then turns compellingly vengeful. The reliably good Reynolds gives a masterclass in words unspoken as the seemingly sensible Mariella. And Kelly’s Anna drives it all with a free-thinking brio: a wit both alluring and hazardous. Pickett binds her characters lightly in a weird time that’s both quite unlike and quite like our own, then slowly but surely tightens the noose.’
Helen Hawkins at The Arts Desk noted: ‘Directed by Lindsey Turner, the production is exceptionally handsome and the staging exemplary. All the action takes place on the edge of a field of corn, with a withered tree to one side (design by Max Jones), where shifts in mood are emphasised through impeccable lighting (by Jack Knowles) that moves from a warm sunny orange and a dismal grey at night to an intense, lurid scarlet when danger looms.’
Critics’ average rating 4.7⭑
Value rating 52 (combination of critics’ rating and most common price)
1536 can be seen at the Ambassadors Theatre until 1 August 2026.
If you’ve seen 1536, please post your review and rating here
Reviews of the premiere at The Almeida
4 stars ⭑⭑⭑⭑
The Guardian’s Miriam Gillinson got straight to the point: ‘Set against the impending execution of Anne Boleyn, 1536 is an effortlessly funny, bold and ballsy play, which asks the question: just how much have things really changed for women today?’
‘it’s a terrific debut, with meaty roles for three of our finest young actresses, and plenty for an incisive director like Turner to get her teeth into. Bravo,’ proclaimed The Standard’s Nick Curtis.
The Stage’s Sam Marlowe wrote, ‘Kelly, Reynolds and Hill are deliciously natural together, funny, irreverent, tender and teasing…There is, perhaps, nothing startlingly new here; but there’s a freshness and an ease about Pickett’s ear for conversational gambit and character foible that makes the play eminently watchable’.
Sarah Crompton at WhatsOnStage called it ‘an impressive, involving evening’.
Time Out’s Andrjez Lukowski summed it up as ‘A fascinating feminist hybrid of EastEnders, Samuel Beckett and Wolf Hall’ or, to put it another way, ‘1536 is a droll and perceptive period piece that’s also a searing and unsettling contemporary feminist drama’.
Ella Duggan for The Independent declared ‘Pickett…has written a script that is lean but dense, rich in vernacular and laced with wit’ and ‘Director Lyndsey Turner orchestrates it all with characteristic finesse, guiding us from rolling laughter to horror with a barely susceptible gear change.’
3 stars ⭑ ⭑ ⭑
Clare Allfree for The Telegraph describing the play as ‘effervescent, extremely funny’ noted, ‘Pickett characterises her protagonists with eye-popping vitality and, thanks in no small part to outstanding performances from Reynolds, Kelly and Hill, in ways that vividly energise our understanding of historic female experience at the hands of men.’
1 star ⭑
The Times’ Clive Davis was mystified by the play’s appeal to others. He called it ‘the kind of simplistic, feminist-lite drama about the evils of patriarchy that you normally encounter in a one-hour slot at the Edinburgh Fringe, where my instinct would be not to write a review to spare the feelings of everyone involved.’
Critics’ Average Rating 3.6⭑
1536 was at the Almeida until 7 June 2025 and can be seen at the Ambassadors Theatre 2 May-1 August 2026.
If you’ve seen 1536, please post your review and rating here