Claire Allfree

“This is a magnificent revival and, along with 1536 and James Graham’s incoming The Standard of Living, evidence perhaps of the possible resurgence of straight plays in the West End.”

“I admired this production but I can't say I enjoyed it.”

“The performances are glorious, too: Miya James is both unshowy and mesmeric as Raelynn; Saltburn’s Sadie Soverall is horribly compelling as the wild and glowering Shelby.”

“Longhurst’s revival is correspondingly both a Middle England sitcom and a psychedelic fever dream.”

“Yet the inaudibility of much of Synge’s poetry is a major stumbling block – and the issue should have been resolved during rehearsal by the National itself.”

“Yet neither survive intact in Eldridge’s new play, however niftily he condenses the book’s labyrinthian twists and turns.”

“Several key characters, including the mighty Titans and Hercules’s dim but loyal equine friend Pegasus, have been excised. Panic and Pain, the demonic shapeshifters on team Hades, are now a couple of deadbeat blokes called Bob and Charles. The irritable satyr Philoctetes is now a world weary, very human waiter.”

“Certainly Rosenblatt casts him in this cogent, uncomfortable play as a man who always has the last laugh.”

“Wheeldon doesn’t stint on the big numbers – although he keeps us waiting for a nightmarishly reimagined Thriller in which Jackson is stalked by carnivalesque grotesques and a leering ringmaster.”

“Not quite a rebirth then, but in its way still magnifique.”

“The choreographed children have been drilled to within an inch of their life and the set piece numbers are startingly good.”

“Lent a hand by Lloyd Webber’s sumptuous tunes, so too does this Phantom.”