'Sharp, sardonic' Rules for Living ends Hytner's National tenure

Michael Coveney, WhatsOnStage

★★★★

"Playwright Sam Holcroft has been bubbling under for some while but she now comes into front-line focus with Rules for Living, a sharp, sardonic domestic comedy"

"[Marianne Elliott has] cast Holcroft's play to something like perfection"

Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard

★★★

"There's plenty to savour in Rules for Living but Sam Holcroft’s intricately constructed play, which pictures the frenetic one-upmanship and petty politics of family life, feels overlong and over-egged."

"Marianne Elliott’s zesty production, boldly designed by Chloe Lamford, is packed with moments of inventive physicality."

Michael Billington, Guardian

★★★★

"nothing prepared us for this play, which combines a hilarious Ayckbourn-style family comedy with an analysis of individual survival strategies"

"a comedy that might easily seem mechanistic is given a wealth of spontaneous life by Marianne Elliott’s exuberant production and by Chloe Lamford’s design"

"Even if the final scene underscores what is already apparent, this is an intelligent comedy that leaves us questioning at what point the rules for living we all adopt become a form of entrapment"

Dominic Maxwell, The Times

★★★★

"Mix an Ayckbourn with a game show, place it in laboratory conditions, and you’ll have something like Sam Holcroft’s ingenious and insightful play"

"It’s funny, revealing and excitingly unusual."

"Rules of Living is a great calling card from Holcroft; a superbly sustained production from Elliott, and a fine farewell for Hytner."

Quentin Letts, Daily Mail

★★★

"Those who long for Alan Ayckbourn plays to be jazzed up may be in their element – this is like Ayckbourn in a food whizzer, with a dash of vodka and bitters."

"The writing is a touch scattergun and eventually outpaces comprehension but there is certainly plenty to watch and the acting is never less than top-flight."

Patrick Marmion, Time Out

★★★

"Plays cannot live by rules alone, but Sam Holcroft makes a good go of trying in her suburban comedy of manners"

"Marianne Elliott’s production sees to it that the plot thickens in the second half"

"The trouble is that all the rules are an artificial device imposed by the author and as the show goes on, they feel increasingly like an Ayckbournish contrivance"