Barcelona Reviews – Starring Lily Collins & Álvaro Morte at the West End’s Duke of York’s Theatre London

"One of the best things I’ve seen on stage all year"

"Collins's remarkable stage debut had the audience holding its breath in reverential concentration"

"These are among the best 90 minutes of theatre I have seen all year and the applause at the play’s end went on for so long that Collins began to look bashfully embarrassed."

"This is a remarkable stage debut from Collins, conveying a fascinating blend of interlayered weakness and strength. Irene’s giddy gabbling covers – ever less expertly – deep whirlpools of uncertainty and Morte’s Manuel becomes impatient with the lies she is so obviously telling herself. Yet the self-deception is by no means all one way and the suave Spaniard is edged into a reckoning with his own past."

"Barcelona works splendidly because every element is akin to peeling the layers of a very large onion."

"It’s rare that a play induces in its audience a reverential hush of concentration, with several hundred spectators seeming to sit without the slightest shuffling and hold their breath anxiously as the drama unfolds. This is the special sort of thrill that only live theatre can offer and Barcelona does so triumphantly."

"Lily Collins and Álvaro Morte are revelatory in enigmatic drama"

"Directed by Lynette Linton, their performances are the principal reason to see Barcelona. Both have real charisma, drawing us gently into a play that starts as a romantic comedy, tips into sentimentality and then emerges the other side as something more moving, tentative and strange. It’s an odd construct but somehow it works."

"Most readers of thrillers might spot the plot twists coming, but they are still unexpected enough not to want to spoil them, and they are beautifully held in balance by Linton’s sensitive, quiet direction, and by the two performances that constantly shift between the comic and the emotional, without ever losing their compass."

"Collins is a revelation, as lively as she is as Emily, yet with a lovely capacity for stillness"

"It’s a strangely old-fashioned concoction, not at all earth-shattering or ground-breaking, not always as truthful as it wants to be, or as revelatory as it hopes, yet always engrossing and warm-hearted. A gentle pleasure."

"Lily Collins makes a sensational stage debut"

"The Emily in Paris star and Money Heist’s Álvaro Morte carry this implausible play rather than the other way around"

"Lily Collins makes a sensational stage debut opposite Money Heist’s Álvaro Morte in this two-hander about the worst hen-night cop-off ever, between a vacuous American chatterbox and an arrogant older Spaniard. The Emily in Paris star has presence and timing, and her appearance generates a crackle of excitement comparable to the mania that greeted Sarah Jessica Parker’s at the Savoy in January."

"Shame that Collins and the wolfish Morte – a respected stage actor and director in Spain before he became a lockdown favourite in Netflix’s crime drama – are stuck in a phony emotional rollercoaster by American writer Bess Wohl. Her script shunts the two characters through peaks and troughs of feeling without any thought for consistency."

"The dialogue has superficial zing and polish. I smiled a lot. And the two leads have such chemistry you ignore the sudden swings between lust and loathing, intoxication and sobriety, until they become too improbable to bear."

"[Lynette Linton's] brisk, efficient production accentuates the play’s surface virtues and hurries you over the gaping cracks. There’s a physical confidence and looseness in the acting that only comes when performers trust a director."

"Lily Collins, not as Emily in Paris but as Irene in Barcelona"

"This one doesn’t entirely add up, but there is plenty to enjoy along the way. Collins once again plays a Midwesterner breaking free of her home life on a trip to Europe. She once again handles the comedy, but this is grungier terrain."

"The frothy interplay with a hint of something darker is beguiling. As the characters sober up the play does too, though, and you start to feel the playwright putting her thumb on the dramatic scales. Still, Morte holds the stage with aplomb, while on stage as on screen Collins sells you on every moment while making it all look easy as pie."

"Lily Collins stars in a drama that keeps you guessing"

"A seemingly mismatched couple are thrown together in this uneven play at the Duke of York’s, London"

"... Bess Wohl’s play, first seen at Geffen Playhouse, Los Angeles, in 2016 and staged here by Lynette Linton, plays games with us, constantly shifting the ground over the night the two spend together."

"A few twists later and we are into something quite other: no spoilers, but it seems both characters need something from this encounter — and Irene’s observation about the room turns out to be prescient."

"It keeps you guessing, then. And Wohl uses the twists and turns not to craft a thriller but to peel away expectations and find a closer bond between these two apparently mismatched strangers. But even so, and despite the way Linton, a brilliant director, gives the couple’s disclosures a painful sense of truth, this is an odd play. It never really convinces"

"The performances are compelling, however. Collins, in her stage debut, is a mercurial figure, zigzagging about like a butterfly, both physically and emotionally."

"Lily Collins makes her theatrical debut – and proves she’s one to watch"

"The Emily in Paris star and Money Heist’s Álvaro Morte elevate a rather dated two-hander into something properly affecting"

"It’s great to see a straight play by an unknown writer in the West End, even if the play is both flimsy and dated and predominately a vehicle for Lily Collins, making her theatre debut. Yet the Emily in Paris star acquits herself extremely well in the unforgiving part of Irene"

"Barcelona, by the American playwright Bess Wohl, premiered in 2012, and it shows. The divisive legacy of the Iraq war hovers, causing the first spark of friction between this undeniably ill-matched pair"

"Collins really is good as Irene, radiating effervescent naivety and as giddy as a pony while finding the vulnerability in a sheltered 35-year-old who has never found the strength to challenge her own life choices."

"Alvaro Morte (star of Netflix’s Money Heist), meanwhile, finds his way through a role that in 2024 is fraught with MeToo-style red flags"

"One wonders too what attracted director Lynette Linton, who as the outgoing artistic director of the Bush Theatre has programmed and directed many more accomplished new plays than this."

"Lily Collins and Álvaro Morte share a night of tapas, torment and toe-sucking"

"The stars of Emily in Paris and Money Heist team up for a curiously flat drama mixing suspense, comedy and politics"

"The play commences as frothy comedy, but anyone who saw another Wohl two-hander, Camp Siegfried (at the Old Vic in 2021), will not be surprised to soon encounter darker currents."

"But in Lynette Linton’s production neither the suspense nor the humour hit home, the mix often more awkward than unsettling. The biggest in a handful of plot revelations lacks emotional impact and does not so much shed light on earlier events as render them distractingly implausible."

"There is an ambitious attempt here to interweave how we find our bearings in family histories and global politics. But that balance, much like the bittersweet tone of Wohl’s elegiac drama, remains elusive in a production that carries its own what-might-have-been disappointment."

"Lily Collins should have stayed in Paris"

"The star of ‘Emily in Paris’ makes her West End debut in a play about another American abroad – but its contrived plot means that this story of two unhappy strangers fails to make an emotional impact"

"... a good chunk of Barcelona’s duration requires its actors to do one of the hardest things an actor can ever do: act drunk convincingly. Collins and Morte make a go of it – and special mention to the messy make-out scenes choreographed to comically realistic effect – but it gets old fast. Despite the short 90-minute running time, there are one too many studied stumbles and repetitions."

"The problem is that these face-offs have little emotional heft to them; rather, they feel aimless and worse yet, pointless. Irene is unable to muster any sort of argument in opposition to Manuel, folding in on herself like a deflated souffle."

"Moments intended as gut punches land with a feather-light touch; monologues are heavy in exposition but lacking in the requisite emotional scaffolding to support them. As the sun rises and Manuel finally confides in Irene his terrible secret, it’s too little too late to care."

"Infuriating"

"Lily Collins of Emily in Paris makes her West End debut in this contrived, cliché-littered play"

"It’s a mixed bag of a culture-clash story."

"But the play doesn’t take a surprise pivot into true political debate at this point. Wohl really only uses these arguments as psychological window dressing for gently tweaking our expectations and showing us how fundamentally lonely these characters are."

"Collins does well to soften the edges of a character who remains fundamentally irritating, even after we learn more about her. Morte gets meatier material, and he competently plays gloweringly, enigmatically tragic with a strong sideline in exasperation."

"Linton’s staging is full of clever flourishes – such as Manuel ominously rolling up his sleeves while staring fixedly ahead – that introduce a welcome uncertainty about how dark things are about to get."

"But this is an infuriating play. It’s packed with plot contrivances that see it spinning its wheels to audience patience-testing effect, in service of a final-act reveal."

"Lily Collins struggles to bring her character to life"

"The Emily in Paris actress stars opposite Money Heist’s Álvaro Morte in Bess Wohl’s two-hander, which is so schematic that its musings on life seldom ring true"

"In Bess Wohl’s two-hander at the Duke of York, Collins and Álvaro Morte sip rioja in an apartment with a view of Gaudí’s landmark, the Sagrada Familia, but this late-night encounter between two strangers is so schematic that its musings on life, death and love seldom ring true."

"It’s certainly brave of the daughter of the rock star Phil Collins to take the plunge in the West End. The problem is that, most of the time, her character, Irene, is so unbearably ditzy that you struggle to see how anyone could bring her to life."

"There’s an explosion of tipsy, erotic energy at first. Then secrets slowly rise to the surface as Lynette Linton’s production ticks along. Jai Morjaria’s subdued lighting casts shadows in the set designer Frankie Bradshaw’s domestic interior."

"Lily Collins totters through a bland night in Spain"

"Both actors have little to do other than present themselves and slightly inflect the first impression of flat-packed characters. She turns out not to be quite as silly as she seems (that would be hard) and considerably kinder. He has reason to be more troubled than he appears. Each cajoles – or forces – the other into making a decision that will completely change their life, but the emotional temperature is so low and the changes achieved so easily that they might as well be switching television channels."

"Now it's Emily in Barcelona, a rom-com with a Spanish hunk and a dark twist"

"One of the strengths of this tricksy two-hander is that it keeps you guessing."

"Running at just 100 minutes, the play takes too long to get us to care for these two characters. But as the plot finally thickens and both reveal their much more interesting selves, we finally get involved – and increasingly tense"

"Barcelona is not perfect: There's too much telling and too little showing. But it turns into a play about learning to live again when you think it's all over. Linton draws a wonderfully precise performance from Collins, who begins as a stereotype (Collins in her comic element, as a vacuous blonde with verbal diarrhoea), but gradually finds stillness, a quiet intensity and hidden depths... to the surprise of her character and the audience. A glittering stage career beckons."

"Everyone involved in this dreadful romantic thriller should have known better, apart from possibly Lily Collins"

"Not to be melodramatic about it, but everyone involved in Barcelona should be ashamed of themselves. Well, maybe not star Lily Collins, who stays so close to her Emily in Paris comfort zone"

"And okay, I’ll always give a pass to Lynette Linton, a brilliant and empathic director who frankly deserves a decent West End payday. She has also assembled a solid team of creatives here - when the play’s terrible story got too much for me I could at least take solace in the delicate shift of Jai Morjana’s lighting, as evening drifts from moonlight to dawn in a Barcelona apartment."

"And look, American playwright Bess Wohl’s play isn’t ‘good’ but would probably make more sense on Broadway, in front of a US audience."
"Collins is bubbly and fluid, but she lacks the range or heft to wrangle any real pathos out of Irene’s (fairly banal) personal revelations. Morte is fine, but it feels beyond him to square the circle of Manuel being horny enough to bring Irene back, while concealing a hysterically emo secret that would surely keep him well out of ‘the mood’."