Clarkston Reviews starring Joe Locke, Ruaridh Mollica & Sophie Melville in London

"Joe Locke proves he’s bigger than Heartstopper"

"Who better to lead a new play about the ecstatic highs and maddening pitfalls of youth than Joe Locke from Netflix’s Heartstopper... Just don’t confuse this for a star vehicle: Clarkston is surely the coolest show in the West End at the moment."

"Playwright Samuel D. Hunter’s script burns with urgent questions about happiness and identity, but never feels over-wrought or didactic."

"As for Locke, he has a natural flair for the stage, delivering comedy and heartfelt moments with gravitas way beyond his bubblegum image"

"Jack Serio’s pacey direction is minimalist, rarely requiring physical props to tell the story, save for some cartons, shelves and boxes in the warehouse of Costco where the boys work. It leaves the story beautifully distilled by the very capable actors."

"Heartstopper’s Joe Locke could convert Gen Z to theatre with his West End debut"

"The Netflix star is funny and touching in this soulful staging of Samuel D Hunter’s Clarkston"

"As well as being likely to bring in Locke’s mostly Gen Z fan base (and perhaps convert them to the power of theatre), the play deserves a wider audience because it has something pertinent to say about this generation of rather lost young men."

"[Joe Locke] is funny and touching as Jake"

"... there’s meat enough in this 2016 work, nicely served by director Jack Serio, even if the writing shifts from arresting experimental twists to schematic efficiency."

"In that innocent, confused expression of yearning, something rich, and haunting, is sounded."

"Heartstopper’s Joe Locke has nailed this coming of age part"

"The star of Netflix’s gay teen rom-com is once more knotted-up in will-I-won’t-I romantic agony - this time in Samuel D Hunter’s 2015 play... The difference for Locke this time, is that instead of a gawky young schoolboy, Charlie, he’s a gawky young East Coast American graduate of ‘Post Colonial Gender Studies’, Jake."

"... the play is not however at all depressing. Instead it’s about the beauty of making connections which release you from the pain of life’s false hopes and unavoidable fears."

"... Locke shows himself to be as fine an actor on stage as he is on screen, twitching with self-doubt - while doing a flawless American accent"

"Hunter’s story is a very conventional slice of modern American life, and it’s a slow burn, pivoting on emotional nuance and the pains of intimacy. But that doesn’t make it sappy, and director Jack Serio’s production is careful to keep the actors looking raw and exposed"

"Now Locke has nailed this kind coming of age part, it could be time to test his undoubted talents with something more classical. Is Hamlet too much of a Heartstopper?"

"Heartstopper’s Joe Locke joins lonely souls looking to make life matter"

"Co-starring Ruaridh Mollica and Sophie Melville, this bleak three-hander by Samuel D Hunter leaves little unsaid"

"Despite the show’s overly expository dialogue, Clarkston gradually gives way to an intimate story about trying to make the best of the hand you’ve been dealt."

"Mollica effortlessly breathes life into this hard-shelled character who doesn’t know how to talk to a man romantically and has never seen the ocean other than in photographs."

"... his days are shadowed by his troubled mum, Trisha (played with immaculate control by Sophie Melville)"

"The script is often heavy-handed, with a backstory handed to us on a plate and little left unsaid."

"Languid and low-key"

"Joe Locke of Heartstopper stars in Samuel D Hunter’s undernourished chamber piece"

"... what unfolds between them is gentle, subtle – these are the kind of lives that go unremarked, the kind of crises you could pass by without noticing. The piece is sensitively directed by Jack Serio and attentively acted by Joe Locke (Heartstopper), Ruaridh Mollica and Sophie Melville. But the pace is so languid, the drama so intimate and miniaturised, that it becomes faintly frustrating. We yearn for a little more substance; and what at first seems delicate ultimately begins to feel undernourished."

"It’s all very meticulously done, and the affection that gradually emerges between Chris and Jake is touching, but it just doesn’t seem quite enough. A languid, low-key chamber piece, in the end it leaves you unsatisfied."

"Joe Locke shines, but £100 is steep for a slight new play"

"The Heartstopper actor and his co-stars are excellent in Samuel D Hunter’s drama about two American drifters, but it’s not a three-figure night out"

"The writer Samuel D Hunter, best known for the play and then Oscar-winning film The Whale, gives his characters engagingly chewy dialogue and complex origins."

"... Locke, 22, nailing his American accent, is a gentle agitated joy as the over-educated Jake"

"Locke brings an unsentimental, compellingly awkward spirit of yearning. The Scottish actor Ruaridh Mollica is equally excellent as the outwardly sturdier Chris, a working-class wannabe writer whose lovingly spiky mother (Sophie Melville, also great) is a reformed meth addict keen"

"There’s some gorgeous writing, but not enough plotting to stop the conceits from feeling like conceits. It starts to feel theatrical rather than engagingly lifelike."

"Clarkston is lovely, it really is. But it’s slight."

"A fine cast headed by ‘Heartstopper’ star Joe Locke wade through this dense, dour US drama about a young man who flees to small town America"

"American writer Samuel D. Hunter’s 2015 play, making its UK debut at Trafalgar Theatre, isn’t big on laughs."

"Hunter’s writing is perceptive about the doubts that lurk beneath people’s hopes, but its aim at a grander poetry about life can fall short."

"Locke brings a baffled consternation to Jake that occasionally deepens into something more plaintive and agonised. He shares an appropriately fragile chemistry with Chris"

"It’s an effective performance for the emotionally grim tenor of the play – Chris feels like an implosion waiting to happen. The talented Melville sketches Trish in more shades than the script"

"The final scene suggests some hope for Jake and Chris, but the route has been pretty thankless."

"Heartstopper's Joe Locke and Ruaridh Mollica shine in shallow play"

"Joe Locke, Ruaridh Mollica and Sophie Melville are fantastic in an underwhelming look at sexuality, class, addiction and loneliness in small town America."

"Heartstopper and Marvel's Agatha All Along fans hoping to see more twitchy, elfin sensitivity with undercurrents of neurotic self-absorbtion from Joe Locke will not be disappointed by his strong performance here. His is, once again, compelling as a damaged young man"

"An aspiring writer with a deadbeat runaway father and struggling addict mother Trisha (Sophie Melville), he's vividly and touchingly played by an impressive Ruaridh Mollica."

"There is so much potential here which, despite such strong performances, frustratingly amounts to very little."

"Here he also cranks in colonialism, mental health, addiction and a very serious medical condition. It's a lot for a short play of 95 minutes with no interval, one sparse set and just three actors."

"The two actors achieve some tender moments and, whether due to the writing or Mollica's fine work, I found myself rooting for Chris. I'm guessing the rushed, yet utterly predictable ending is intended to inspire and convey catharsis. I may have shrugged."

"Lacking in scope but brimming with heart"

"... fans coming to see Clarkston may be surprised that it’s not really a star vehicle. Samuel D Hunter’s decade-old play is a tender, downbeat duet for a pair of dispossessed souls with jagged interruptions by a third character, and Locke has, arguably, the least showy of the three roles."

"Locke acutely captures the nuances of somebody whose insecurities and issues mean that he’s never really considered how privileged he is."

"Locke is excellent, but it’s Ruaridh Mollica’s watchful, quietly tortured Chris that feels like the heartbeat of the play."

"Melville is brilliant and multi-layered as needy, unreliable Trisha, making vivid her maternal love for the son she barely understands, but absolutely chilling when cornered whilst in addiction’s grip."

"The writing is subtle but blistering: a morose yet eloquent meditation on lives not well lived, with precious little hope, but an abundance of challenges. It’s blunt and bleak, and almost nothing happens, but the acting and the oblique humour ensure that it is engaging for the most part."

"Joe Locke is the draw, but there’s little else on offer in this tale of drifters"

"Samuel D Hunter’s 100-minute drama lacks the goods to justify its steep price tag"

"All the clichés of romantic coming-of-age stories are here, familiar and bland as cornflakes."

"Locke’s on familiar territory with this role as an awkward, privileged young man who'll smash a $5,000 television just to show his would-be boyfriend he’s annoyed. Mollica’s got more to work with, and he really does bring some welcome depth to his world-weary shelf-stacker"

"Sophie Melville delivers a subtle, sympathetic performance here, even if she’s too young to convincingly embody the worn-down, meth-addicted single mum of a teenager."

"... what is surprising is how little interest Hunter takes in the colonial resonances of this story."

"In different hands, perhaps the clash between the thorny past and the sanitised present could feel more vivid"

"Joe Locke is fine but this is pure American cheese"

"The Heartstopper star will bring the crowds but the play is too generic and static to go anywhere"

"The name is a clue. Not to some great twist in this all-American tale of love in the once Wild West, but to just how generic Samuel D. Hunter’s play turns out to be."

"That’s how this play works: they tell each other their life stories unprompted in a sweep of deja vu, every line and scene and character like something we’ve seen a hundred times before in plays and Netflix series and MLM YA fiction."

"Of course Heartstopper star Locke is the big draw here, making his West End debut as Jake, and he’s perfectly fine even if he’s acting through his accent a bit too much."

"Even the usually magnificent Sophie Melville can’t quite shape Trisha, Chris’s feisty mum, into something fully three-dimensional."

"It’s Ruaridh Mollica who really shines through as Chris, like River Phoenix in Stand By Me has aged ten years, a beautiful blast of vulnerability who carries all the play’s emotional heft."