Review Roundup: Lily James and Kristin Scott Thomas Open in LYONESSE. What Did the Critics Think?

Lyonesse is now open. Kristin Scott Thomas and Lily James star in Penelope Skinner’s new play, directed by Ian Rickson.

Elaine (Kristin Scott Thomas) a reclusive and talented actress, disappears in mysterious circumstances. 30 years later, she finally feels ready to tell her story – summoning Kate, a young film executive (Lily James), to her remote Cornish home to assist with her glorious comeback.

But who really controls the stories we tell, and how we get to tell them? Will these women own their narrative, or will it be swept away from them at any given moment?

The show is playing a strictly limited season until 23 December at the Harold Pinter Theatre.

What did the critics think?

Photo Credit: Manuel Harlan

Aliya Al-Hassan, BroadwayWorld: Skinner won acclaim for her 2011 Royal Court Play The Village Bike, but while that play cleverly overturned stereotypes about expectant mothers, here the writing feels amateurish and chaotic. We feel bombarded by issues, none of which are properly explored: #MeToo, coercive control, womens’ struggles with work/life balance, comedy, drama, trauma. It’s perfectly possible to combine all these themes, just not here.

Clive Davis, The Times: Very occasionally, a play comes along that is so weirdly inept that you don’t quite know how to respond. If you were to stumble across Penelope Skinner’s new drama in a thinly populated corner of the Edinburgh Fringe, you would put it down as an undergrad experiment. To find it in the West End, with Kristin Scott Thomas and Lily James in the lead roles, is bizarre.

Nick Curtis, The Evening Standard : Mostly this seems like an assemblage of half-baked ideas and lazy conceits. Why Lyonesse? Why does Act One end in slapstick? Why does the supposedly raging sea only hit the side of the house twice? Why, above all, did Scott Thomas, James and Rickson sign up to this? As star vehicles go, it’s a car crash.

Dave Fargnoli, The Stage: Skinner’s sharply observed writing is full of humour, wit and fragments of poetry. Director Ian Rickson never rushes the sprawling, stately scenes, allowing plenty of time for the endearingly flawed characters to grow on us, and for doubts to fester – doubt over the truthfulness of Elaine’s version of events, and over the motivations behind Kate’s ardent support of the project.

Sarah Crompton, WhatsOnStage: Scott Thomas is superb, commanding the space with her presence and her widening eyes, at once mischievous and determined. This is a woman who takes on the sea in a daily swim, calming her mind in a battle against the waves; you feel the power of her decisions as well as her sadness. With her battered glamour and slightly crazed ferocity, she conveys both the sense of a woman taking one last chance to break out of a trap that her stalker has made – and the terrible sadness of a life wasted. “What if I am no longer spellbinding?” she asks, fingering her yellowing, old reviews.

Serena Davies, The Telegraph: James, not a natural stage actress, gives one of her best performances here, deeply felt and relatable. Scott Thomas revels in the wacky Elaine, arriving in fur coat and swimming costume, throwing hilarious shapes to a dance track and play-acting her trauma for laughs. The actress has always excelled at flintiness, and she uses it now to refuse her character’s own tragedy, thus making her by far the most arresting thing on stage, and conjuring, in the play’s finest moments, a sense that anything could happen. Her keenness to throw Kate’s husband off a cliff makes you think she could just do just that.