Review Roundup: Howard Davies' CHILDREN OF THE SUN at the National Theatre

Howard Davies' Children of the Sun, at The National Theatre (following Philistines, The White Guard and The Cherry Orchard), opened to press in the Lyttelton last night and runs through 14 July 2013.

Maxim Gorky's darkly comic play, adapted by Andrew Upton, is set in Russia as the country rolls towards revolution. Only Liza (Emma Lowndes) suspects their impending doom, while her scientist brother Pavel Protasov (Geoffrey Streatfeild) cares for nothing but his experiments.

Let's see what the critics had to say:

Michael Coveney of whatsonstage.com says: It's a much more unsettling and restless play than Chekhov's masterpiece of the previous year, The Cherry Orchard, and there's a general thesis that the sort of progress signalled in Protasov's experiments - and echoed in the references to the onset of bottled beer and the motor car - could literally backfire on the society it is serving.

Quentin Letts of the Daily Mail says: Emma Lowndes is credible as Protasov's delicate sister, Gerald Kyd does a luxuriant turn as a ridiculous painter, Justine Mitchell comes to the boil as Protasov's frustrated wife. Florence Hall makes a willowy maid whose simple desires are so refreshingly open compared to these fraught, spoilt middle-class types.

Paul Taylor of the Independent writes: Davies and his regular designer Bunny Christie once again show their mastery at animating the wide Lyttleton space and Andrew Upton's adaptation, with its calculated anachronisms ("Welcome to the human race..it's horrible in here" declares one character) keeps jolting us out of the complacency of galleried hindsight.

Henry Hitchings of the Evening Standard says: Howard Davies's production conveys Gorky's mixture of sanity and daring. At first it has a leisurely quality. Bunny Christie's design is finely detailed yet suggests an expansive world of privilege, with Protasov's laboratory sitting to one side - a hothouse, display case and potential Tardis.

Michael Billington of the Guardian says: Davies's production precisely captures the contradictions of a work in which people are absurd without being worthless. Geoffrey Streatfeild as Protasov follows a basic rule of acting by playing the character from his own point of view, as a man who believes his visionary experiments justify his unworldliness. Justine Mitchell as his alienated wife, Emma Lowndes as his truth-telling sister and Paul Higgins as the Hamletesque vet who passionately adores her, also give beautifully defined performances. You won't find here the symphonic beauty of Chekhov. But this is a work that, in its jaggedness and volatility, echoes a fractured society on the verge of momentous upheaval.

Siobhan Murphy of the Metro writes: This is Upton and director Howard Davies's latest joint foray into immersing National Theatre audiences in early 20th-century Russian drama. Together they stop Children Of The Sun sliding into enervating high-minded debate by carefully calibrating the various examples of thwarted romance. The most touching is gloomy Boris (a wonderful Paul Higgins) and his determined pursuit of Liza ('I seek disappointment,' he begs hopefully); the funniest is Boris's widowed sister (Lucy Black, twitchy as a bird) flinging herself repeatedly at a startled Protasov.

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