Nina Raine’s new play is now playing at the National Theatre, starring Anna Maxwell Martin. But what have critics been saying about it?
The Stage: ★★★ “Roger Michell’s production is, like the writing, precise and elegant, if a little too tidy.”
Time Out: ★★★★ “if it’s not problem-free it’s gutsy and supremely well performed.”
The Independent: ★★★★★ “Directed by Roger Michell with a wonderfully light-footed nippiness as it darts around among the domestic landmines.”
The Arts Desk: “Powerfully written, compelling to watch, and both entertaining and thought-provoking, Consent is only slightly marred by having almost too much content, almost too much to say.”
A Younger Theatre: “Acted beautifully and staged under Hildegard Bechtler’s design of a canopy of lamps, Consent makes for heavy viewing, but littered with laughs along the way, you’re left with something complete yet still unsettling.”
Evening Standard: ★★★★ “Besides its astute observation of the balancing acts involved in marriage, there’s plenty of finely tuned comedy.”
The Upcoming: ★★★★ “It’s all very chic and unfussy, designer Hildegard Bechtler and director Roger Mitchell clearing the way for the legalistic fireworks.”
Variety: “It’s so stuffed with ideas and so intricately constructed that it can feel calculated, despite some rich performances.”
The Telegraph: ★★★★ “The evening – artful, and yes a tad too convoluted and contrived – is stylishly directed by Roger Michell, and designed with beauty and economy by Hildegard Bechtler.”
The Guardian: ★★★★ “It pulls off one of the most important things a play can do: it helps us to listen in a new way. Almost to empathise.”
Exeunt Magazine: “Consent wanders the infinite grey area between ‘yes’ and ‘no’, yet the symmetry that Raine and Michell revel in throughout the play, through wordplay and imagery, can feel just a tiny bit too on the nose.”
The FT: ★★★★ “this is the kind of play and production in which the renowned and consummate talents of Anna Maxwell Martin (as Chaplin’s character’s vengeful wife) merit little more than a passing mention in the context of everything else that’s going on in terms of acting, writing and discreet direction. A bit of a beaut all round.”
London Theatre.co.uk: ★★★★ “The end result is a meaty and complicated new drama that offers audiences a forum to examine their own morals, truth and faith in the legal system.”
Broadway World: ★★★★ “A thought-provoking piece about the slipperiness of truth, fragility of relationships, and murky unknowability of justice.”
London News Online: ★★★★ “As a result, this production is powerful, yet entertaining and will leave you scrutinising where and to whom you make judgments within your own life.”
British Theatre Guide: “Consent is patchily stunning but could have been so much better.”
The Reviews Hub: ★★★★ ” in a play which does sometimes stray a little too closely to preaching, it’s that sense of humanity which always pulls it back.”
London Box Office: ★★★★ “a complex and an emotionally shattering production that is not to be missed.”
There Ought to be Clowns: “there’s much to enjoy in the intricate thought-patterns of a play that is unafraid to ask bold questions about what justice and forgiveness really mean.”
The Daily Mail: ★★★ “after a blisteringly cynical first half it turns out to be just another vexed relationship drama.”
Consent continues to play at the National Theatre until the 17th May.
