Downstate London Reviews and Tickets

Arch provocateur Bruce Norris returns with a surprisingly sensitive drama about convicted sex offenders... Norris doesn’t ask us to have empathy, but he does make a case for sympathy.'
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Downstate fulfils art's profound function of making you look and think hard about complex, difficult moral issues that society has a tendency of solving with superficial solutions.'
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Controversial but also clear-eyed and compassionate. Bruce Norris's ever-provocative play puts people first, labels second...beautiful and wounding play... in the production of a writer's dreams.'
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Bruce Norris is following in David Mamet's blistering footsteps to become the current most urgent provocateur of American theatre. That he does so with more humanity and compassion, however, makes his work all the more stinging...'
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...there is a visceral power to the performances under Pam MacKinnon’s direction. Francis Guinan is outstanding as Fred... Norris has opened up a controversial subject...'
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Bruce's norris' harrowing but cynical new play...Downstate has important points to make, and the quality of the production is undeniable. But does it do enough to justify its graphic descriptions...?'
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Bruce Norris’s studiedly provocative play... The acting is excellent throughout...I admired, rather than liked the play.'
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Haunting vision of sex abuse by a playwright with a gift for unsettling...an uncomfortable experience, flecked with humour but bleak and haunting...'
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