Are the critics loopy for Lupin?

Michael Coveney, WhatsOnStage

★★★

"At the moment, this potentially delightful two-hander for the cavalier Etonian racing correspondent Roger Mortimer and his wastrel Etonian odd job merchant son Charlie is a few fences short of a Grand National."

"Jack Fox is just starting out and James Fox has done very little theatre and it shows in both cases. There's something forced and unpractised about their acting.."

"There's a bracing air of posh actor defiance about the show in the wake of criticism that working class lads and lasses are being squeezed out unfairly. Poppycock of course; I couldn't see this brazenly upper class tract – the style of wit, and the style of life, strays somewhere between P G Wodehouse and Cold Comfort Farm – populated by the likes of Ray Winstone and Daniel Mays, for instance.."

Dominic Maxwell, The Times

★★

"It’s a pleasure to see James Fox back on the London stage for the first time in nine years, but I wish he had something more substantial to work with than this affable but slight comedy."

"I can only imagine that Roger’s bon mots and indirectly expressed love for his son are more at home on the page."

"A few lines do score… but the level of wit and wisdom isn’t so dizzyingly high that Dear Lupin can get by without more incident."

"And while Philip Franks’ production uses Adrian Linford’s set to evoke different locations, the expected emotional payoff never quite arrives."

Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard

★★★★

"It was a judicious move to sign up James and Jack Fox to play Roger and Charlie Mortimer, father and son authors of the delightfully witty 2012 epistolary bestselling book Dear Lupin, as Fox père et fils enjoy a warm and easy rapport that suits the roles splendidly."

"Philip Franks’s loving production captures well this subtle mood of a very English understatement and Fox senior’s customary suave detachment is a fine match for Roger’s tone."

"Fox junior twinkles with an edge of mischief, but rarely is the atmosphere of genteel japes seriously threatened."

Paul Taylor, Independent

★★

"Jack Fox's performance is full of puppy-ish, eager-to-please energy but it's too callow to offer any insights into Charlie's compulsions."

"It's as easy to resist the charms of James Fox's over-emphatic Roger who here dispenses his dry, exasperatedly affectionate advice and his routinely unfunny insults against women at dictation speed as if hoping to get into a dictionary of quotations."

"The piece feels alienatingly cosy and complacent, except for those touching moments near the end where the son recognises the depth and steadiness of his dying father's undemonstrative love. "

Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph

★★★

""Mildly amusing" is probably the best term for much of what we see in the first half. Some may struggle to have sympathy for the predicaments of a public-school drop-out whose pater has a gift for sardonic, but also borderline snooty, social commentary. "

" You realise that the Foxes too are rehearsing their adieus in the hospital-bed scene that closes the evening, and the unmanly hug that lingers long as the lights fade"

"On the way out, I saw a middle-aged chap frantically dabbing away the tears. That spoke volumes about a tricky page-to-stage show that finally, like prodigal Charlie, comes good"

Michael Billington, Guardian

★★★

"…only at the end of the evening did I feel myself stirred by genuine emotion."

"…although this is the opposite of one of those deadly evenings where dinner-jacketed figures bombard each other with letters, I was puzzled by the character of Roger Mortimer."

"James Fox, who gets most of the best lines and the chance to do a host of lightning impersonations, is always fun to watch."

"The final sight of the two men dancing together is an inspired touch that makes up for the faintly tiring display of Mortimer’s talent for witty disdain."

Natasha Tripney, The Stage

★★

"Much of the first half feels like a series of turns: here’s James Fox with a silly wig on as a raddled Soho prostitute, here he is in military garb, here he is in comedy boxer shorts, whoops, he just said ‘fuck’, how funny."

"Jack, meanwhile, is puppyish and almost endearingly eager but his is not the most nuanced performance."

"Beneath the sprinkling of humour, surface amiability and veneer of Englishness there are some archaic attitudes which feel as if they’re being celebrated rather unquestioningly."

Bella Todd, Time Out

★★★

"Roger and Charlie are played by real-life father and son James and Jack Fox, and there’s an affectionate ease to their interaction and a double poignancy to their final embrace.."

"Puppyish in his first big stage role, Jack Fox struggles to match his father’s timing."

"Those who prefer a witty phrase when it isn’t being turned at the expense of, say, women and black people, might prefer to throw the dustsheet back over that desk."

Dear Lupin runs at the Apollo Theatre until 19 September 2015.