"To begin with, very little takes place and the quickly exhausting dynamic between the only two characters onstage stumbles along without any indication of plot, suspense or stakes whatsoever."
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"This 90-minute production leaves the couple pretty much where they started emotionally, albeit in greater financial peril, telling us, perhaps a little moralistically, that unhappiness is the price we must pay for stability and, though you may dance as manically as you like, eventually you have to stop and just get on with getting on. Not exactly what one might want to hear to send you skipping out into a summer dominated (yet again) by grim news of our own."
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There is no tension between [Lindsay Duncan & Hilton McRae] and lines about pain and loathing seem to be spoken at a remove ... it feels jarringly tepid when it should be tumultuous.
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It’s a bold pair of actors who step into these roles ... [but] there’s a curious restraint in their performances.
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They’re a plausibly unhappy couple. Not, though, the sort of fascinatingly fractious couple this 90-minute show needs. This Dance of Death is elegant without being resonant.
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At its best, this is a claustrophobic domestic drama ... But at its worst, it descends into a Frankensteinian melodrama with a poor sense of pacing and believability.
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