More Reviews

Susan Elkin in The Stage has the following description of Alex: "It means several actors play two or three roles. Alex Jennings, for instance, gives us a conscientious, competent, nicely camp actor playing Britten with tortured vowel sounds and awkward, anxious body language, who relaxes only at the piano keyboard. The Jennings character also ‘reads’ for the all-knowing servant in Auden’s rooms, supported by de la Tour as Stage Manager, reading for a cleaner to good comic effect. There are some lovely moments, too, when the fictional playwright gets carried away with artistic pretensions and the cast try - and fail, of course - to make sensible drama of it."

Full review: The Stage


Henry Hitchings in London Evening Standard says: "Bennett frames the incident theatrically: we are backstage during rehearsals for a drama that deals with the two
men’s reunion. So, Richard Griffiths is crabby Fitz, an actor playing Auden. Alex Jennings with beautiful precision incarnates Britten through the actor who plays him, as well as playing an Oxford college servant unsettled by Auden’s personal habits, which include a taste for rent boys and an enthusiasm for pissing in the sink."

Full review: ThisisLondon