"Racine in modern dress we have seen before. Racine stripped of heroic gesture, heightened delivery and played in idiomatic prose is a startling novelty, and Declan Donnellan's production justifies it up to the hilt." The Times

"It says much for the young Cheek by Jowl company at the Donmar Warehouse that they held their audience silent and spellbound with the stylized decorum of play by Jean Racine, notoriously the least accessible dramatist to English ears. Under Declan Donnellan's direction the production gives a thrilling idea of how a great dramatist made sustained order out of sudden furious changes of mind, violent shifts of emotion and unreasoning seizures of hope and despair. Tension is built, crisis upon crisis breaks. All against the simplest of settings; an inlaid figure's star patterning the floor; constant light and costumes of grey, black and white. Declan Donnellan's direction stealthily produces an electrifying effect." The Daily Telegraph

"The value, originality and excellence of their stage work is such that I am passionately convinced they could do the Peking telephone directory and make it charismatic." The Chronicle, Northern Ireland