Review Roundup: ALTERATIONS Opens at the National Theatre

Aliya Al-Hassan, BroadwayWorld: Despite lovely staging and great performances, the production stays a little beyond its welcome, with several scenes lingering too long. Not every forgotten work is a masterpiece, but Abbensetts's work certainly deserves more recognition. It is in safe hands here.

Arifa Akbar, The Guardian: As a period piece, it is entirely dusted down and stands gleaming. Oliver Fenwick’s lighting design suffuses the stage in sepia as characters recount memories, or it spotlights them in emotional ways – a sentimental technique yet it works. For all its clunkier moments, this is undefinably winning drama. Perhaps it is down to the truth of the characters, so tender, hopeful, determined and unbeaten despite everything. A retro gem.

Andrzej Lukowski, TimeOut: It ultimately feels like a nicely observed but relatively slight slice of life drama. Linton sometimes overcompensates: having a lad wearing Beats headphones occasionally wander across the stage feels like a hysterically heavy-handed way of reminding us of the present generation’s connection to Walker’s. I’m also not totally convinced by the star casting of Kene. It seems to me that Walker is a relatively simple character, but Kene’s combination of freakish good looks and a determination to burden Walker with a load of physical business and a somewhat incongruous pernickity middle manager vibe leaves the character feeling weirdly elusive and ill-defined compared to literally everyone else on stage. Alterations is a ’70s fringe play that will never be a perfect fit with the Lyttelton. But was it worth staging it anyway? Absolutely!

Anya Ryan, London Theatre: Arinzé Kene makes Walker as blindly driven as he could possibly be. Frustration explodes from him when his staff do not follow his orders; at one point, he collapses onto the floor and squeals like a petulant child. When the company comes together, the stage is alive with their differences of opinion about who and what they should be. This is a glorious revival that proves Abbensetts’s work deserves and needs to continue to be seen.

Anya Ryan, London Theatre: Arinzé Kene makes Walker as blindly driven as he could possibly be. Frustration explodes from him when his staff do not follow his orders; at one point, he collapses onto the floor and squeals like a petulant child. When the company comes together, the stage is alive with their differences of opinion about who and what they should be. This is a glorious revival that proves Abbensetts’s work deserves and needs to continue to be seen.

Tim Bano, Evening Standard: Linton keeps everything in a square patch on stage, which often revolves, with just a few dreamlike, fantasy-infused moments taking place outside the square. That little shop floor is Walker’s safe space, away from a society where - as he and Buster discuss - he’s only ever seen as ‘a problem’. And though a few threads could be snipped away here and there, Cooke and Linton don’t just revive this finely tailored play. They make it burst at its seams.

Average Rating: 76.7%