“ ‘Cuckoo’ is alarming, to be sure, and highly entertaining too.”
Read more

“The family dynamic is wonderfully enchanting, the bittersweet chemistry palpable from the outset thanks to subtle but towering performances...It will remind you of a very literal home truth: that family is the ballast we tie ourselves to whatever the storms that life throws at us. It can weigh us down but without it we would be lost.”
Read more

“Baffling. That’s the only word to describe Michael Wynne’s play...I kept waiting for something to happen. But hardly anything does.”
Read more

“While it’s totally fair that Wynne doesn’t opt for a sudden late shift into melodrama, I was left fairly frustrated by the wilfully understated, largely silent ending, which hints at various resolutions but never fully embraces any of them. The kitchen sink format begs an explosive climax and without it, ‘Cuckoo’ feels robbed of something – it’s a distant rumble of thunder, a storm that never breaks.”
Read more

“Michael Wynne...typically writes in a comic register and ‘Cuckoo’s’ humour – sometimes ebullient, other times mordant – fires the drama. There are times, though, when the play, directed by Vicky Featherstone, wavers and is in danger of coming to a standstill.”
Read more

“Wynne’s domestic affair finally feels too slight to sound the depths of our current malaise. Diverting as a summer filler, it still smacks of an opportunity wasted.”
Read more

“Michael Wynne’s new play, set in his beloved Birkenhead, gives us recognisably working-class figures who spend the opening minutes eating fish and chips in the living room. Not a great leap forward in dramaturgy, I admit, but it’s better than being subjected to yet another sophomoric political lecture.”
Read more

“...this drama is so bland and plot-lite – until its contrived 11th-hour revelations – that it seems interminable...Like a couple of hours lost to Twitter, this play passes the time, but leaves you questioning what, if anything, you really got out of it.”
Read more