Review Roundup: Did THE EXORCIST Terrify Critics? - All the Reviews!

Forty-five years after William Peter Blatty's best-selling novel terrified an entire generation, The Exorcist will be unleashed onto the West End stage for the very first time in a uniquely theatrical experience directed by Sean Mathiasand adapted for the stage by John Pielmeier.

Jenny Seagrove will play Chris MacNeil opposite Peter Bowles as Father Lankester Merrin, Adam Garcia as Father Damien Karras, Clare Louise Connolly as Regan, Todd Boyce as Doctor Strong, Mitchell Mullen as Doctor Klein, Elliot Harper as Father Joe and Tristram Wymark as Burke.

The Exorcist will play a strictly limited run at the Phoenix Theatre through 10 March 2018.

Let's see what the critics had to say...

Photo credit: Pamela Raith Photography

Gary Naylor, BroadwayWorld: But even such impressive work only draws attention to a flaw in the play: like many stage adaptations from films, the action is just too episodic, John Pielmeier's script a series of scenes rather than a coherent whole. The drama barely generates momentum before there's another blackout, some more lightning flashes and a rattish scurrying sound and we're back in the attic for 90 seconds having just spent two minutes in the drawing room.

Lyn Gardner, The Guardian: If this production actually managed to deliver the thrills, like a theatrical version of a fairground ghost train, you might forgive the complete lack of characterisation or the uncertainty of tone that leaves the evening awkwardly pitched between the camp and the uncanny. It grinds out the tale with jerky efficiency, like a storyboard on stage that moves not from one scene to the next but one set piece to the next.

Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard: Sean Mathias's suspenseful production starts sedately. Jenny Seagrove's neurotic film star Chris is about to begin a shoot and has moved into a rented house with her daughter Regan (a convincing Clare Louise Connolly). But after playing around with a Ouija board, the inquisitive 12-year-old is possessed by a demon - whose suggestively fruity tones are provided by the great Ian McKellen, even if it's not entirely to the show's advantage to use such a well-known, cultured voice.

Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph: The story, I think, taps age-old fears about the moment a biddable child turns unruly adolescent. When Clare Louise Connolly's Regan self-harms with a knife, emits buckets of X-rated filth (lip-synching to Ian McKellen, all purring malevolence) or stabs a crucifix in her groin, she could almost be playing devil's advocate about the constraints on her freedom. You might even liken her character to an Antichrist version of the restive Nora in A Doll's House.

Paul Taylor, The Independent: I mean it as a compliment when I say that this show is less scary than the film but that it's perhaps more profoundly disturbing. It offers the pleasure of experiencing a story that you love-to-dread told in another medium that traps the audience in the same space as the characters and demands that the famous "moments" (the projectile vomiting, the swivelling head, the violently shaking bed et al) be conjured up live.

Natasha Tripney, The Stage: But, unforgivably, Mathias fudges the exorcism scene, sucking all the tension, terror and demonic polyphony out of it. Peter Bowles' Father Merrin gives the sweary devil a bit of a telling off, which pretty much does the trick, then Pielmeier chucks in a bit where the possessed Karras is told to rape Regan with a crucifix, that seems misjudged on many levels. While the production delivers a couple of serviceable jump-scares, it fails to capture what made the original so visceral and, well, compelling.

Daisy Bowie-Sell, WhatsOnStage: A mixture of screens and projections are used in certain moments to create a vision of the ghostly demon and the terrible shadows that torment poor Regan. It's these, along with exceptionally loud bangs, crashes and bursts of light, which really make you feel the demonic presence. Ian McKellen voices the demon with a fruity twist, perhaps inappropriately, but his disembodied voice is probably the most rounded character in the entire thing. Adam Garcia and Jenny Seagrove are both fine as Father Damien Karras and Regan's mum Chris, but though there is an attempt at backstory, their roles are see-through.