Did Lungs take the critics' breath away at the Old Vic?

Sarah Crompton, WhatsOnStage

★★★★

"There couldn't be a more timely play than Lungs, yet it was written ten years ago. Duncan Macmillan's two-hander is a clever, darting thing, and in the hands of Claire Foy and Matt Smith – reunited for the first time since they played the Queen and Prince Philip in The Crown – it is a bit of a wonder."

Arifa Akbar, The Guardian

★★★★

"Scenes cut away and change seamlessly so that day turns to night within seconds, a row turns into a sex scene, a breakup into a reunion. Foy and Smith manage the switches of mood and tone with a virtuosity that verges on ostentatious, and there are very few off-moments in pace."

Nick Curtis, Evening Standard

★★★★

"Matt Smith and a luminous, mercurial Claire Foy give tour de force performances in this study of a couple's struggles and doubts on the road to parenthood. Duncan Macmillan's play couldn't be further from the world of their previous pairing in The Crown."

Tim Bano, The Stage

★★★★

"Macmillan's writing is an absolute gift for good actors. Look at Denise Gough in People, Places and Things, or Hayley Atwell in Rosmersholm, or Jonny Donahoe in Every Brilliant Thing. So it's a good thing Claire Foy is a very good actor. In a huge contrast to her performance in The Crown – that tightly coiled state of grace she does so well – here she can let loose."

Clive Davis, The Times

★★★★

"If they resemble insufferable caricatures at first (she even wears dungarees) Macmillan's fractured dialogue and the bravura performances of Claire Foy and Matt Smith pick away at their certainties. At the end of of an intimate piece you realise that, much like everyone else, they are stumbling in the dark."

Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph

★★★★

"For his staging, as slick as The Changing of the Guard, of Duncan Macmillan's potent, prescient but not wholly persuasive 2011 two-hander about love, reproduction and the future of the planet, Matthew Warchus has cast – what a coup – acting royalty, literally."

Andrzej Lukowski Time Out

★★★★

"Smith and Foy are always watchable, and Lungs is funny throughout. But their performances – hers in particular – grow immeasurably in stature as the short play wears on, as they're virtually crushed by the world – until finally the world pretty much forces them to make a stand against it."