"......Clarke Peters and Miriam Margoyles almost took the roof off with their joint performance of letters between diarist Anaïs Nin and novelist Henry Miller, as they were in the midst of a passionate affair in 1932. The large screens projecting the action came into their own, as the small glances and eyebrow raises really added to the intense atmosphere..."
Hell is other members of your family. Eugene O’Hare’s taut psychological drama about an elderly mother and her middle-aged son trapped in a state of mutual loathing pulls off the difficult trick of being bleak and claustrophobic yet darkly comic at times.
...deliciously nasty dialogue from Eugene O’Hare at the Park Theatre
Margolyes is on superb form as the vulnerable and bullying Nell.....A new play could not hope for better performances.
Miriam Margolyes owns the stage from her wheelchair as Nell, a cantankerous East End pensioner who trusts no-one and finds her dependence on others mortally frustrating. Her containment of rage, and its release in a stream of dexterous and inventive filth is both a delight and a challenge to watch, because it seems so authentic………………………. And Margolyes is just a fabulous old bag.
Miriam Margolyes is dazzlingly good as Nell, fully inhabiting the mischievous and darker aspects of the character while visibly changing her tone and manner with nurse Fee to elicit sympathy and friendship. The joy of this mercurial performance lies in its ambiguity, never being sure whether she is the cruel and thoughtless mother Sydney believes or a woman damaged by guilt and grief for a lost child…..
Actor Miriam Margolyes is a phenomenon. .. She's a great trooper, dominating the stage with her force of determination and presence. Her performance is full of expressive grimaces and wonderfully earthy verbal flights, and at times she infuses Nell with a solid Cockney humanity, her perceptions sharp and her tongue as hard as a cosh…….
Acerbic humour from O’Hare coupled with the inimitable Miriam Margolyes in a rare London stage performance make Sydney & The Old Girl a production not to be missed. This is a horrid play. It's about a horrid, grumpy old woman and her horrid, racist son who are trapped together in a horrid claustrophobic flat. ……. Virtually the only reason to see it is its star Miriam Margolyes, who, even though she is trapped in a wheelchair for most of the time, energises the stage by the sheer force of her personality and the vigour of her performance. Emotions – fury, concern, malevolence, fear – pass over her mobile face like storm clouds; she is always watchable and compelling…..
Park theatre, London Dark comedy peeks through the relationship between a malevolent mum and her paranoid middle-aged son in Eugene O’Hare’s Pinteresque play …..Miriam Margolyes, lately more familiar for being her uninhibited self on television, reminds us what an excellent actor she is. She brings out all of Nell’s grumpy malevolence while suggesting she is haunted by guilt over the institutionalising of another son and even has a grudging regard for his despised sibling….