Here Lies Love gets critics dancing

Michael Coveney
WhatsOnStage
★★★★★

… the most exciting, adventurous new musical on the South Bank since London Road … a whole new energy of its own and a brilliant synthesis of dee-jaying by Fatboy Slim … The elision between disco sound and live singing is technically perfect … Natalie Mendoza's full-wattage overnight star performance embraces emotional and nationalistic variations – complemented by Gia Macuja Atchison's well-defined best friend Estrella – in a stark Brechtian presentation … the whole immersive event – compelling, tactfully complemented with video projections and photos – a double-edged fable of modern democracy high-jacked by personality politics, greed and corruption … a revolutionary musical theatre experience.

Michael Billington
Guardian
★★★

… beautifully staged by Alex Timbers … while it makes a fine immersive spectacle, it left me craving more hard information about its subject … The big issue concerns the book; or rather, the lack of one … I know a musical is not a history lesson, but the lack of a libretto means we never fully understand how the Marcos regime survived as long as it did … I was fascinated by the kaleidoscopic ingenuity of the design … It is all momentarily exciting, and Natalie Mendoza gives a stunning performance as Imelda … Mendoza holds the show together and is well supported by Mark Bautista … I came out feeling that such a subject craves more complex treatment … Byrne has come up with a clever idea, but I longed for a first-rate musical dramatist to add substance to the 90-minute spectacle.

Dominic Cavendish
Daily Telegraph
★★★★

You can sit this one out, if you like, in the comfort of seats in the galleries. But I suspect it’s more fun being gently cajoled this way and that by ushers … much of the music is instantly catchy and avoids electro monotony … Natalie Mendoza is still sensationally good … There's strong support too from Gia Macuja Atchison … from a sleek-haired Mark Bautista as Ferdinand Marcos and from Dean John-Wilson as Ninoy Aquino … The show doesn’t quite grasp that holy grail of combining club-nite excitement with fully engrossing theatre. But my goodness it comes close and what a way to launch the Dorfman.

Paul Taylor
Independent
★★★★

… a brilliantly immersive son et lumiere production by Alex Timbers that shows off the National's newly refurbished studio-sized auditorium (now renamed the Dorfman) to spectacular effect with its sheer spatial bravura … The inescapable comparison is with Evita. Here Lies Love is, to my mind, politically cannier and sharper about the queasy, telling overlap between manipulative-diva worship on the musical and on the political stage… this is an auspicious opening for the Dorfman.

Dominic Maxwell
The Times
★★★★

… What a lively, inventive way to reopen this space … a slick, sensory overload … The decadence never has a pause … You may find that you’ll be dancing one moment, confronted with a political assassination the next … The show ends with songs that make palpable the awful emotions from which Imelda – played superbly by Natalie Mendoza – had cocooned herself. There are fine turns too from Dean John-Wilson as the white-suited Aquino and Li-Tong Hsu as Aquino’s mother … If you examined this show in the clear light of day you would find parts of it trite. But this garish spectacular keeps the clear light of day at arm's length until the moment it is needed.

Quentin Letts
Daily Mail
★★★★★

The staging is ingenious and owes as much to rock videos as it does to musical theatre. The auditorium has been turned into a nightclub, many audience members standing in the pit-like central space while they are corralled by a shrieking DJ. I was fortunate to have been given a balcony seat but in the mosh pit I saw several Daddy-O critics and at least one baronet… It might easily have worked as a traditional musical. In this brilliantly drilled, genre-breaking form, it becomes little short of an instant classic for urban groovers… I can't say I was emotionally involved once but perhaps that was never the intention. Novelty is the objective and it definitely takes musicals into fresh territory.