Review Round-Ups

Did critics find time for Ticking?

The production opened to mixed reviews at Trafalgar Studios last night

Anthony Head as Edward
Anthony Head as Edward
© Bronwen Sharp

Holly Williams, WhatsOnStage

★★

"Ticking wastes its potential with an excess of cynicism."

"He also directs his small but impressive cast here, with Tom Hughes giving a twitchy, volatile performance as Simon, Anthony Head…as his emotional distant father, and Niamh Cusack as his stricken mother."

"The writing veers between cool construction and histrionic outbursts, trips down memory lane spiked with pitched accusations. There are also nice, perceptive details in Williams' writing that make the set-up believable."

Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard

★★★★

"Ticking is [Paul Andrew Williams] debut play – and it’s satisfyingly raw and intense."

"Anthony Head is his suave father Edward, who appears to be a typical emotionally illiterate Englishman – a pillar of the community, whose life is defined by his debonair manner and love of cricket. But he has a very dirty secret."

"The play pulses with questions. Is Simon guilty of the crime for which he’s set to be executed? Will he win a reprieve? What strange events have driven him so far from his privileged roots?"

Alice Saville, Time Out

★★

"This turgid new play from writer and director Paul Andrew Williams…detaining us on a Chinese death row with a rich white kid who’s so astonishingly obnoxious that it’s hard not to will the hour of his demise forward."

"The play’s one-room, real-time setting would normally be an excuse for some cabin-fever thrills. But instead, condemned twentysomething Simon spends his final hour on earth raking through his visiting parents’ leafy Home Counties past in a kind of bizarre Freudian clean-up session."

"Williams’s complete inexperience in both writing and directing for the stage shows. Even with our eyes on the starry cast, we can’t escape purgatory."

Quentin Letts, Daily Mail

★★

"Writer/director Paul Andrew Williams has chosen an interesting, harrowing subject. What do family members say to death-row inmates on their last visit?"

"But I am afraid I disliked this show. So much of it is violent – and violently overacted by Tom Hughes as Simon."

"Cliches abound. Simon, fond of his mother, has sex-related ‘issues’ with his father. Simon’s last supper arrives – beans on toast and a pint of stout. 'Bet that plate of beans ends up being smashed against the wall in anger,' said I to myself. Sure enough…"

Ann Treneman, The Times

★★★★★

"On the whole, I am not sure that I wanted to spend 90 minutes in a room with the subject of capital punishment. But that was my error. This new play by the film writer and director, Paul Andrew Williams, is not really about the death penalty but about the secrets, lies and loves of one very small family."

"Niamh Cusack is wonderful as Sylvia, his mother, every facial expression so English, full of remorse for the oddest things."

"We are all also living this last hour, waiting for the reprieve, if it comes, with Simon and his family. Tick tock, tick tock. It may not be real but we are in real time in this very realistic cell (design by Jean Chan) where we are constantly watched by the silent guard (Jackie Lam).''

Ticking runs at Trafalgar Studios until 7 November.