Kristin Scott Thomas is 'elegant and refined' in The Audience
Michael Coveney, WhatsOnStage
★★★★
"Kristin Scott Thomas succeeds on the throne with her own special brand of twinkling irony and glacial dignity"
"Stephen Daldry's smart production and Bob Crowley's ingenious setting of the receding perspectives in Buckingham Palace are still in good order, and the costume and wig changes remain a technical wonder"
"Scott Thomas, considerably younger than Mirren, has a more playful and frostier edge about her"
Holly Williams, Independent
★★★★
"Scott Thomas is certainly regal: elegant, refined, chin lifted and nose looked down. This is a rather arch interpretation"
"Daldry’s direction is crisp, each short scene with each prime minister fully-realised, while also ricocheting off one another with precision."
"The cast are good all round: Gordon Kennedy’s lumbering Gordon Brown almost gets a round of applause he’s so familiar"
Dominic Cavendish, Daily Telegraph
★★★★
"this revamped version of Peter Morgan’s enthralling and royally entertaining (albeit at times too flippantly light-hearted) play could hardly be more up-to-date"
"Elegant Dame Kristin easily holds her own against the gilded memory of Dame Helen Mirren"
"The play is still a rewrite short of bejewelled perfection; recent alterations haven’t helped"
Michael Billington, Guardian
★★★
"Scott Thomas gives a highly accomplished performance that veers between mischievous irony and icy hauteur"
"But the play remains, as before, a series of sketches about the prime minister’s weekly audience that only twice flares into real drama"
"although the play is entertaining enough, it has less to say about monarchy than Mike Bartlett’s King Charles III, and reveals a disdain for elected politicians that I, for one, cannot share"
Dominic Maxwell, The Times
★★★★
"It takes right-royal nerve to replace Helen Mirren in one of her most celebrated roles, yet Kristin Scott Thomas pulls it off. Though she is 15 years Mirren’s junior, she proves every bit as fascinating as the Queen in this top-notch revival."
"As Stephen Daldry’s production zigzags elegantly through the decades, Scott Thomas’s frosty warmth starts off recognisably her own"
"This dame makes a hell of a Queen."
Quentin Letts, Daily Mail
★★★★
"La Scott Thomas succeeds the mighty Dame Helen Mirren in the role. And there, perhaps, lies the problem"
"How was the play? Pretty good"
"This is a Queen who can sound sneery and who does not command the stage. She telegraphs jokes too much"
The Audience runs at the Apollo Theatre until 25 July
