A few Family Reunion Reviews

Samuel West as Harry Monchesney in TS Eliot's Family Reunion


The Telegraph...
.."Daunting, yes, but the cast, spearheaded by Samuel West's haunted Harry, have got the measure of it. At times they're consciously and comically aware of how peculiar they must sound as they grope for a language to describe their nameless familial dread"..

The Independant...
.."Samuel West's insistently self-dramatising Harry may have all the best arguments about the trouble we're in – he's living the nightmare – but Jones's Amy becomes the still, throbbing centre of tragic deprivation"..

The Guardian...
.."In the past, reviewers have thought Harry a prig, but in Samuel West's performance he is a sympathetically tormented soul searching for peace"..

The British Theatre Guide...
.."Already, before Sam West's character makes his entrance, a quartet have transformed themselves into a poetry-spouting chorus, chanting mysterious lines that might have been drawn from The Four Quartets, in unison"..

Variety...
.."A typically buttoned-down yet immensely articulate Samuel West is Harry, Eliot's re-imagining of the Greek hero Orestes. He returns to his chilly family pile in the north of England after wandering for eight years, during which time his wife has died"..

The Sunday Times...
.."It is a homecoming for young Lord Harry Monchensey (Samuel West) and a birthday party for his indomitable mother (Gemma Jones)"..

The Stage...
.."In particular Harry, the troubled Orestian hero, who returns to his family home pursued by avenging Furies, is played here by Samuel West with an almost insolent throwaway style that heightens and deepens the drama"..