People, Places & Things – Reviews Round-up

"Lightning strikes twice in this triumphant revival"

"Denise Gough is magnificent in a return to the role that made her a star"

"Sometimes lightning strikes twice. In 2015 Denise Gough delivered a gutsy, star-making performance as fragmenting actress Emma in Duncan Macmillan’s piercing, witty and urgent play about addiction at the National Theatre. Last night, Gough reunited with Macmillan and director Jeremy Herrin to recreate that thunderbolt in the newly restored Trafalgar Theatre. I’ve rarely seen a show where script, production and star mesh so perfectly."

"... it’s Gough’s navigation of a gamut of emotion, from withdrawal jitters to defensive truculence, disinhibition to raw vulnerability, that drives the evening. She’s magnificent."

"This revival is a triumph for Macmillan, for Herrin, but above all for Gough, who has revisited her greatest hit, not as a vanity project, but as a piece of unfinished business. And she absolutely smashes it out of the park"

"Denise Gough is extraordinary"

"This is much more than a play about one person’s experience: it is total, hellish immersion."

"Gough, who recently revealed that she is a former addict herself, appears to be devoured by her character; she has an answer for everything but fear in her eye. Bodies rise from beds. There are flashes of darkness, the clang of white noise. It’s an unforgettable night."

"Denise Gough stuns in blistering addiction drama "

"A brilliant, honest, funny, painful play about addiction, it blew audiences and critics away and won Denise Gough an Olivier award for her outstanding central performance. Now both she and the play are back, tearing a strip through the West End. Incidental details have changed — the script now mentions Covid — but in essence the play remains the same and every bit as powerful, and Gough, again, is stunning."

"Denise Gough’s extraordinary performance has only got better"

"Gough’s performance. It’s as extraordinary as when she first delivered it: shocking, magnetic, unbelievably real. In fact, it appears only to have grown in richness and exquisite fragility."

"Herrin’s production is loud, intense, and full of perfectly measured performances: Sinead Cusack is sharp in three different roles, Danny Kirrane gently moving as an addict-turned-nurse, and Malachi Kirby excellent as the wise comrade who has done recovery and relapse a fair few times before. We see the way that addicts in recovery quickly become a tribe, enduring shared experiences few others would understand"

"People, Places and Things is not just a humane hymn to the vulnerability of people and how scary it is to truly believe in something, but a celebration of the healing power of art and theatre. It’s an electric, communal experience. The play can now be regarded as a contemporary classic, Gough’s performance confirmed as one of the greatest of her generation."

"Nerve-shreddingly riveting"

"Denise Gough blazes in the return of Duncan Macmillan’s electrifying drama of addiction and identity"

"What an astonishing head rush this is, back in the West End nearly a decade after its National Theatre premiere. Duncan Macmillan’s drama is a hurtling exploration of addiction, existential crisis and identity, at once visceral and brainy, and Jeremy Herrin’s staging, in a Headlong co-production, is electrifying: a sensory immersion galvanised with euphoria and panic, rage, fear and pain. And once again, it is driven by a phenomenal performance from Denise Gough as Emma, whose struggle to get clean is conveyed with such sweaty, nauseous, wracking vividness that, watching it, you almost forget to breathe."

"Denise Gough is unmissable in a blazing revival of Duncan Macmillan’s addiction drama"

"People, Places & Things hits the stage like a blow on the head."

"Jeremy Herrin’s tremendous production, with tremendous Gough, is even better second time around."

"Watching again, I realised how rare it is to see a really intelligent character on stage. Not someone proving his cleverness by delivering a lecture or demolishing an adversary with a smart retort. Not a woman wearing specs. This heroine – who checks into rehab then ducks and dives, resisting and seeming to embrace treatment, seducing and maddening everyone around her – is truly quick, truly probing, putting questions before the audience formulates them: is there, she asks, a contradiction in a scientist wearing a crucifix?"

"Herrin’s full-throttle production repeats its enveloping force."

"Denise Gough reprises a shattering story of addiction"

"The Olivier award-winner returns to her role as an actor in rehab in Duncan Macmillan’s brutally powerful play"

"Gough does not seem quite fully invested as Emma but this is exactly what the role requires, as her performance captures every turn of her character’s psyche. Emma is not only a pathological addict but also a pathological actor (“If I am not a character, I’m not even sure I’m there,” she says) although you only see the extent of this in hindsight."

"Emma’s outcome is defined by us, it seems, the play a dramatic Rorschach test, of sorts. To me, Macmillan seems to be saying that not only is there no escape for an addict from the people, places and things that cause their addiction, but that their only refuge takes them back to the original source of their pain. How bleak – but also brilliantly done."

"Denise Gough is unmissable once again"

"Taking on the role of spiraling actress and drug addict Emma for a third time, Gough is quite simply magnificent"

"Gough now reprises the part in Duncan Macmillan’s pull-no-punches drama about addiction and recovery, so that previous admirers can marvel all over again and a new generation of fans be wowed by her raw and brutal honesty."

"Watching the play for the third time now, I was struck by how much Emma talks, even when she is desperately attempting to avoid saying anything revealing. It is with this torrent of words, of anger and self-justification, that Macmillan captures so exquisitely the solipsism of the addict, locked in the suffocating torture chamber of her own head."

"A vital line in the final scene, which throws into question much of what we have just witnessed, is strangely thrown away. Never mind: this is Gough’s show and she is, once again, quite simply magnificent."

"Gough is magnificent and absurd in equal measure"

"Denise Gough is still phenomenal, Duncan Macmillan’s existential addiction drama is still devastatingly clever"

"As Jeremy Herrin’s original production of Duncan Macmillan’s smash addiction drama returns, it’s now a given that Gough – among other things now a fixture of the ‘Star Wars’ universe – will deliver a phenomenal performance. And she does! She is beyond tremendous as Emma."

"Gough is magnificent and absurd in equal measure, a performance that’s simultaneously high comedy and high tragedy."

"Denise Gough dazzles – but this tale of addiction loses its way"

"Returning to the role that won her an Olivier Award, Gough has lost none of her power in bringing this complicated antiheroine to life"

"Nearly a decade after she won an Olivier Award for the role, Gough has lost none of her power in bringing this complicated antiheroine to life. It is truly a summit performance for an actor that should be studied at drama schools for years to come"

"But no matter how hard Gough tries, there is something fundamentally dissatisfying about Duncan Macmillan’s script. It is certainly entertaining, but achieves this end only through playing to the basic dark allure that stories of drugs and broken people have."

"The conclusion feels rushed and unlikely, in contrast to the far longer and more subtle first half. In the end, it feels a shame that the story cannot sustain itself to meet the heights of Gough’s performance."