Reviews

★★★★ The Guardian

'Ben Chaplin has just the right air of thwarted idealism as Granville Barker: a man whose life was wrecked, according to one biographer, by British indifference to the need for a national theatre. Jason Watkins as the peripatetic Dickensian burying his sadness under a Pickwickian exterior and Tara Fitzgerald as the hopelessly lovelorn Beatrice are also first-rate' Michael Billington, The Guardian

★★★★ Daily Mail

'Mr Chaplin combines a bewitching inner stillness with an almost balletic quality when he moves...Jason Watkins gives a beautiful performance as the nobly discreet husband of an ill wife' Quentin Letts, Daily Mail

★★★★ Mail on Sunday

'Ben Chaplin portrays Harley as tremendously charismatic; cool, but also kind, a very attractive combination, and all the characters are beautifully realised' Georgina Brown, Mail on Sunday

'Ben Chaplin enhances his uncanny physical resemblance (long jaw, long limbs, period dolefulness) to Granville Barker with a manner both languid and acidic. Jemma Redgrave's mournful landlady expresses herself not so much by speaking as watching: her dogged, quiet presence – as a vigilant, suspicious audience – becomes more and more weighty' The Observer

'Chaplin's portrayal of Harley is full of subtle ambiguities: arrogance and tenderness, nonchalance and suppressed loneliness. Redgrave's mix of nerves and bruising frankness is startling, as is Watkins's raw grief, between his tweedy joviality. Talking into the night, seated at long refectory tables that recede into the shadows (radically low-lit by Rick Fisher), this is a poignant study of isolation and intimacy, impenetrability yet also collective sympathy and a rekindling joy in theatre' Independent on Sunday

'Drop-dead handsome (like Barker) and radiating languid irony and emotional reserve, Ben Chaplin is a superb in the role of protagonist we find on the American college lecture circuit (along with Jason Watkins's endearing Frank Spraight, a Dickens recitalist)' The Independent

'A vivid, compelling actor, he makes Barker sardonic, funny, acerbically intelligent and observant – but he also suggests a deep weariness that remains unspoken. There’s lovely support too from Jemma Redgrave as a brutally honest landlady and Jason Watkins as a struggling Dickens recitalist' Financial Times

'Richard Nelson's new play is scrupulously researched and features a superb cast sensitively directed by the excellent Roger Michell' The Telegraph