Love London Love Culture rounds up the reviews for Roy Williams and Clint Dyer’s one man play starring Rafe Spall.
The Guardian: ★★★★ “Overtly political references range from Trump and Steve Bannon to Tommy Robinson and the Windrush scandal but these embody the play’s few weak moments, when Michael speaks as if on a soapbox. They are few and far between, though, and its broader politics – of class, race, nationhood and family – make for the most exhilarating and hair-raising drama. This is truly a play for today.”
Culture Whisper: ★★★★ “There are some plot points that seem underdeveloped and unresolved, but they hardly matter because of Spall’s mighty performance. It’s a vigorous, exhausting display that masterfully blends humour, empath and anger.”
Evening Standard: ★★★★ “Dyer’s production pulses with dynamism, helped by stark lighting changes and blasts of Nineties trip-hop. It was clearly created for Spall and he is the engine that drives it, recklessly and fast. I sincerely hope he gets to have a lie-down and a gargle afterwards.”
The Telegraph: ★★★ “For 90 minutes, Rafe Spall (son of Tim), delivering a superb performance but one so full-throttle it almost breaks its own gear-stick, barrels about a cruciform thrust-stage and lets this archetypal ordinary geezer get a slagheap of issues, the personal mushed with the political, off his heaving chest.”
London Theatre.co.uk: ★★★★ “Spall’s astonishing physical performance keeps him restlessly on the move throughout the play, always maintaining a relentless flurry of words that makes it a true tour-de-force. As he travels from rage and raw grief to understanding, we are entirely gripped.”
A Younger Theatre: ★★★★★ “Spall’s ability to remember such a magnanimous number of lines whilst bringing the audience along on his stream of fragmented yet clear consciousness in a way that feels increasingly dynamic is astounding.”
iNews: ★★★★ “It’s a mesmerising and commanding piece of bravura acting which also shows how Michael’s personality is itself a performance: gradually we realise that he is merely acting out a role. The result is a superbly nuanced portrayal of anger, masculinity and national identity.”
The Metro: ★★★★ “This is a terrific piece of work that pierces the ugly, Brexit-amplified confusion over who we are as people and as a nation — in a language that always rings true.”
London Unattached: “Death of England is a play that can genuinely speak to a diverse audience, something the National Theatre needs to be and is doing.”
British Theatre.com: ★★★★★ “With a superb soundscape by Pete Malkin and Benjamin Grant, and a lighting design that swaggers along with Michael, this is urgent storytelling for a 100 gripping minutes, visceral, raw, emotional, funny, complex, broken and beautiful, much like England itself.”
There Ought to be Clowns: “An admirably intelligent piece of writing; a truly astonishing piece of acting.”
The Upcoming: ★★★ “It is a visual indication of the tack taken throughout: stating rather than investigating, delivered by a performer who stays at eleven from start to finish. It’s bracing. It also feels like something of a missed opportunity to properly dig into class, race and masculinity in this country.”
Death of England continues to play at the National Theatre until 7 March 2020.
