We round up the reviews for this production directed by Robert Wilson and starring Isabelle Huppert.
Broadway World: **** “American auteur Robert Wilson’s production has a curious power to bridge gaps between opposites. It is dense, Huppert fires words like a majestic barrage of bullets, but also light: Darryl Pinckney’s lyrical language is inflected with Tudor verse, flashes of Shakespeare, and cloaked in Beckettian existential angst. It doesn’t slice with sharp precision, but overwhelms with hurricane force.”
Evening Standard: **** “Created by legendary 82-year-old American theatre artist Robert Wilson, originally for the Théâtre de la Ville–Paris, it’s a bold challenge to Huppert’s technique, charisma and rigour rather than an easy star vehicle.”
The Guardian: **** “Wilson, who also designed the staging and the lighting, is the most controlling of directors who nevertheless manages to draw astonishing performances from top-flight performers. Mary is his marionette, brought to life by Huppert, her every gesture precisely choreographed. This point is explicitly made when she starts to move, zigzagging back and forth across the stage, her arms scything the air, in a stilted puppet dance.”
London Theatre 1: ** ” Isabelle Huppert puts in an energetic and enthusiastic performance. But the production is essentially too successful in creating distancing effects through harsh lighting and ice cold characterisation.”
Everything Theatre: *** “However, this show is bewitchingly absorbing and has a compelling, rhythmic atmosphere and intricate form that demands engagement on some level until the very end, whether you choose to read the words, listen in, or watch the stunning stage work.”
The Telegraph: **** “As the doomed monarch, the French star is elementally compelling in this angular, challenging one-woman show.”
British Theatre Guide: “Mary Said What She Said is poetic, epic, kinetic, an intriguing art installation, but it’s not dance. The movement choreography leaves a lot to be desired. Mary’s arms move stiffly in strange semaphore—makes me think she is already in her coffin or sleepwalking. I don’t warm to it. Her circular walking, pacing her cell, reflects the circular writing.”