Review Round-up: Chariots of Fire takes the silver

James
McArdle plays the role of Harold Abrahams, a Jewish undergraduate at
Cambridge, and Jack Lowden plays Eric Liddell, a Scottish
Christian.

The
play runs until 16 June at the Hampstead Theatre and then continues
at the Gielgud Theatre from 22 June to 10 November.

Michael
Coveney
Whatsonstage.com
★★★★

“Designer
Miriam Buether has transformed Hampstead Theatre into a compact
arena stadium for Edward Hall’s staging of the 1981 movie
Chariots of Fire,
a show that ignites the Olympic spirit and then douses it in
patriotic fervour with Gilbert and Sullivan, the Eton boating song,
‘Rule Britannia’ and ‘Jerusalem’. Mike Bartlett’s functional
script is a pretty accurate re-run of Colin Welland’s screenplay,
though he’s ‘stranded out’ a bit more the parallel stories of Eric
Liddell (Jack Lowden), the Scottish Christian who runs for the
glory of God, and Harold Abrahams (James McArdle), the immigrant
Lithuanian Jew, who employs a professional coach (Nicholas Woodeson)
to win at all costs…In the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee year we are
frantically reinventing our recent past as an ideal scrapbook of
memories and Chariots of
Fire – which goes
straight into the Gielgud Theatre after Hampstead – may well feed
this yearning and mood of escapism. It’s very well done and a
highly enjoyable show on its own terms, with Vangelis’s original
score supplemented by composer Jason Carr, a cavalcade of
nostalgia-stained costumes (blazers, boaters, baggy shorts and
calf-length summer dresses) by Michael Howells, and a versatile,
and super-fit, company of 20 actors.”

Andrzej
Lukowski
Time
Out
★★★★

“Edward
Hall‘s production doesn’t quite earn a gold, but it is a very
creditable silver. This is the first outing as adapter for the hugely
talented Bartlett, who currently has a hit at Royal Court with his
baby boomer comedy Love, Love, Love. It brings out
the best in his writing: his text is funny, pithy and creative, but
without the over-ambition or clanging rhetoric that sometimes mars
his plays. He distils Chariots into a series of
short, lively scenes that eschew excessive outbursts of patriotism
and focus on what drove these two men to run. McArdle’s Abrahams is
the star here: his outer suaveness and matinee idol jawline is a mask
that is slowly corroded by his seething ambition and terrible chip on
his shoulder about his poverty-stricken Jewish background. The inner
conflict of Lowden’s devout Christian, Liddell, feels less real: we
are well aware that he will find a way around his unwillingness to
race on the Sabbath. Nonetheless, he’s an intensely likeable anchor
to the spectacle. And a spectacle is exactly what this is: a witty
marathon of sight, sound and sweat that stays on the credible side of
cheesiness without letting Bartlett’s interrogation of the athletic
drive interfere with the fun.”

Henry
Hitchings
The
Evening Standard
★★★★

“Edward
Hall’s assured staging features brawny choreography by Scott
Ambler, Vangelis’s original music from the film (supplemented with
a good deal of Gilbert and Sullivan) and some very effective lighting
by Rick Fisher. A tribute in the programme to a coach from British
Military Fitness is hardly a surprise: the challenges of the
production are punishing yet handled with aplomb. We’re never in
any doubt about what will happen, and some of the more breathless
sequences are unsubtle. But Bartlett has responded warmly to Colin
Welland’s film script, underscoring its interest in outsiders and
the question of what it means to be British. This is undeniably
bombastic fare. If you’re the sort of person who sheds a tear at
Jerusalem, there’s a strong chance you’ll love it. If you’re
not, you may still marvel at the hearty physicality on show. Although
not in the end a gold-medal performance, energy and conviction make
Chariots of Fire a satisfying experience.”

Michael
Billington
Guardian
★★★★

“The
story is told in a succession of quick, staccato scenes that betray
the piece’s cinematic origin. But Hall’s production ingeniously
solves the problem of putting athletics on stage thanks to a
characteristically brilliant Miriam Buether set. She turns the
theatre into a series of concentric circles so that the main
acting-area is a rounded disc equipped with two revolving stages.
Behind the stalls runs another circular track which the actors
constantly pound. Wherever you sit, you are bound to feel the whiff
and wind of hurtling bodies in a state of seemingly perpetual motion.
But Hall has gone further and turned the play into a kaleidoscopic
pageant of 1920s British life… It’s not an evening of in-depth
acting but the cast is as fit as a string band’s worth of fiddles.
James Mcardle also conveys Abrahams’s relentless pursuit of
perfection, Jack Lowden is suitably uncompromising as Liddell and
Tam Williams deserves a special medal for thrice leaping over a
hurdle on which two glasses of champagne are perilously poised.
Nicholas Woodeson as a straw-hatted coach and Antonia Bernath as
Liddell’s Canadian admirer make their distinctive mark. And, even if
the piece sometimes plays too easily on our emotional responses, it
is an ensemble triumph that will clearly enjoy the longest of
runs.”

Mark
Shenton
The
Stage