Review Roundup: CONSENT Opens At the Harold Pinter Theatre

Sonia Friedman Productions and the National Theatre present the West End production of Nina Raine's Consent following the 2017 critically acclaimed sell-out run at the Dorfman Theatre. Directed by Roger Michell and originally co-produced and commissioned by Out of Joint, Consent will playthrough 18 May for a strictly limited 12-week run.

The cast includes Claudie Blakley, Stephen Campbell Moore, Heather Craney and Adam James with further casting to be announced. Set is by Hildegard Bechtler, with costumes by Dinah Collin, lighting by Rick Fisher, music by Kate Whitley, sound by John Leonard and casting by Amy Ball CDG.

Nina Raine's 'blistering new play' (New York Times), directed by Roger Michell, makes a triumphant and timely transfer to the Harold Pinter Theatre this May, following a sold out season at the National Theatre.

Why is Justice blind? Is she impartial? Or is she blinkered? Friends take opposing briefs in a contentious legal case. The key witness is a woman whose life seems a world away from theirs. At home, their own lives begin to unravel as every version of the truth is challenged.

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Alice Saville, Time Out London: It's sparkily written, emotionally bruising stuff. But it's also painfully polite, in that terribly sweary, 'Four Weddings and a Funeral'-type way. Roger Michell's production is endlessly staid, each fresh set-piece argument divided by the anodyne tinkle of piano music, while a John Lewis lighting department-style array of pendant lamps twinkles away from the ceiling above.

Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph: With the #metoo movement erupting since the play's first outing, the piece couldn't be more timely. Yet what's impressive - and provocative - is that Consent faces down simple hashtag narratives. Is it possible that Kitty weaponises the (unseen) bedroom encounter? Who decides just how much personal context should be weighed in the balance? Raine forensically examines the way the legal profession will use technicalities - and rhetorical tricks - to arrive at a fixed-seeming summation of the "truth" without justice necessarily being served, or the story fully told.

Natasha Tripney, The Stage: Premiering at the National Theatre last year, before the Harvey Weinstein allegations and the resultant #MeToo movement, it's a carefully crafted and clearly very well researched play. It's also problematic, in more ways than one, something this West End transfer only magnifies.

Dominic Maxwell, The Times: In lesser hands this would just be an "issue" drama: lawyers fighting a rape case with their usual jaunty rivalry find everything changes when the sexual transgressions come closer to home. Here, however, Nina Raine creates an unforgettably complex, blackly comical and affecting picture of logic and articulacy duking it out with unruly emotions and messy reality. Raine scrapes past her characters' glib facades without suggesting glib solutions. She packs her hotly topical play with as much human life as we've seen on the West End stage for a long time.

Stephen Dalton, Hollywood Reporter: With a mostly fresh cast and updated program notes that acknowledge the #MeToo movement, Consent is a serious-minded work that gains extra heft from recent news headlines but does not pander to them. More discursive than didactic, it explores some contentious issues without reducing them to soapbox polemic. And, perhaps more important, without forgetting the key mission of drama to engage and entertain.

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