It’s Headed Straight Towards Us – Reviews

"Pitch-perfect"

"Well-appointed revival that roots its comedy in the tragedy of the human condition"

"In this pitch-perfect production directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, Samuel West is the prissy Hugh and Rufus Hound the rabble-rousing Gary. The new pair lean into the comedy with ease. Hound’s Gary is bellicose, belligerent and often downright offensive... West’s comic timing is immaculate, tinged with a sense that much of Hugh’s adult life has been spent apologising or settling for second best."

"Edmondson and Planer’s script is peppered with actorly jokes that are guaranteed to get a laugh, with Daniel Day-Lewis’ career a recurring gag. But when the name-calling and the petty jealousies are set aside, prompted by the gradual onset of physical danger, we catch glimpses of the flipside."

"Kavanaugh’s production finds the heart of this play, balancing comedy and catastrophe with skill"

"The three-hander is superbly performed by Rufus Hound as n’er-do-well Gary, and Samuel West"

"Rachel Kavanaugh directs with pace and brio, and Hound and West have an easy rapport, their comic delivery and physical humour superb. But many audience members will treasure Nenda’s fabulous performance – mature beyond her years, with genius timing."

"Two has-been actors hole up in a trailer in Adrian Edmondson and Nigel Planer’s new comedy"

"Samuel West is deliciously vain as Hugh, the actor who has made a career playing butlers. Rufus Hound is comically alarming as Gary, a drunken amnesiac for whom the big time has shrunk to nothing."

"Director Rachel Kavanaugh has fun with the action – and inaction. Insecurity rules."

"The Young Ones grow old in Beckettian satire"

"It has, as you’d expect from a play by two former stars of The Young Ones, a fair few funny lines. Yet be warned, or at any rate primed: Adrian Edmondson, who along with Nigel Planer wrote this study of two actors stuck in a trailer on a film shoot in Iceland, has long been a fan of Samuel Beckett."

"I enjoyed some of the lines and much of the acting, yet there is no escaping the sense that time is just being killed here. Even intimations of impending doom late on don’t register as strongly as jokes about sci-fi clichés and Daniel Day-Lewis."

"Fine cast, though. Samuel West is prissy but never caricatured as Hugh, here to reprise his supporting role as a butler in a successful sci-fi series."

"Rufus Hound is his hell-raising counterpoint as Gary... Some over-shouty moments aside, he gives a typically robust, comically astute performance as the loud-mouthed legend reduced to a one-line cameo."

"Though Rachel Kavanaugh’s production capably handles these actors’ ups and downs — literally, when the floor of Hugh’s trailer starts to shake — Edmondson and Planer stay too firmly in their comfort zones."