We take a look at what is being said about Stewart Pringle’s play being performed at the theatre until the 13th July.
WhatsOnStage: **** “If ultimately The Bounds can’t quite support the immense burden of themes that it sets up for itself, it’s still refreshing to encounter a modern play so suffused with ambition and imagination. It’s unsettling, engrossing stuff, delivered from utter despair by shards of brilliant, boisterous humour. Complete extinction has seldom seemed so entertaining.”
Time Out: *** “Clearly there are not many Tudor football folk horror plays out there. I’d applaud the endeavour alone, but the fact is ‘The Bounds’ is very entertaining – funny, creepy, empathetic. To go there with the obvious simile, its 90 minutes are like a grippingly unpredictable game of football – it’s just unfortunate that it ends without a satisfying result.”
The Arts Desk: *** “Director Jack McNamara, who heads Live Theatre in Newcastle, fields a very good production on designer Verity Quinn muddy set, and the first part of the show is enjoyable. Ryan Nolan’s laddish Percy is both a hooligan and a vulnerable male, while Lauren Waine’s Rowan comes across as a well-balanced sensible counterpoint as well as symbol of female suffering. Soroosh Lavasani lends Samuel an air of privilege as well as sinister fugitive wariness, while Wilbur Conabeare (making his stage debut) and Harry Weston take turns as the precocious Boy. But good performances can’t completely compensate for a plot that, like Gareth Southgate’s England squad, is apt to run out of puff in the closing minutes of the game.”
Theatre & Tonic: *** “Overall, The Bounds is an excellent, thought-provoking play, perfectly timed for both the current Euro football matches and the upcoming general election. If you enjoy football-based banter, mildly chilling rural folk horror, and reflections on how the powerless often bear the brunt of wars and injustices, I thoroughly recommend this play.”
London Theatre.co.uk: *** “Jack McNamara’s quietly unsettling production leans into the elemental and folk-horror qualities of Pringle’s writing, which includes visions of four-headed lambs.”
All That Dazzles: *** “The Bounds is funny and interesting, unsettling as well as entertaining. Its cast are wonderful, mixing horror with comedy effectively. It does however feel as though it tries to cover just a little too much, some of its imagery is wonderful and it does explore some important themes, it just felt a little hard to engage with all these themes equally as the play progressed with a slightly jarring ending.”
West End Best Friend: ** “This is a play with a unique premise and a lot of promise – a valiant punt from the Royal Court, but just misses the goal.”
The Reviews Hub: *** 1/2 “The acting, overall, is fantastic. Nolan and Waine play their friendship like cheeky siblings, always looking to trip the other up. Waine in particular brings realism and nuance to her role, bringing an intrinsic relatibility to a character that would have died hundreds of years before any of us were born. Soroosh Lavasani as Samuel brings a real sympathy to his role of Catholic punching bag, spanning the more nuanced makeup of 16th-century religio-politics with weathered stability against the slightly tiresome Southerners = Poshos-Who-Don’t-Care trope.”
Broadway World: *** “As a whole, The Bounds is intellectually ambitious but too murky for its own sake. Ultimately, the play’s effect depends on what one wants to get from it. It’s entertaining and jarring in all the right spots, but some parts probably work more on paper than they do on stage.”
Rev Stan’s Theatre Blog: *** “However, this is a peculiar play, starting off funny and growing increasingly weird. It is hard to get a handle on, and while that can sometimes work in a play if the overall journey is fun and interesting, this left me increasingly perplexed.”
The Spy in the Stalls: *** “Pringle’s drama is bold in its inception. If it doesn’t quite measure up to its opening promise, it may be that The Bounds needs a space, and a cast, as large as the Whitsuntide match between Allendale and Catton in the mid sixteenth century.”
London Theatre 1: *** “Leading the small cast, Ryan Nolan is outstanding as is Jack McNamara’s direction, not least because of the size of the stage, a stunningly simple design by Verity Quinn enlivened by atmospheric sound and lighting provided by Matthew Tuckey and Drummond Orr respectively.”
British Theatre Guide: “Fleetingly, the story touches on the horrific social abuse of assertive women and the King’s persecution of Catholics, but none of these moments carries any dramatic tension or encourages much sympathy for the victims.”
Theatre Weekly: *** “Ultimately, The Bounds uses the ancient football ritual as a vessel to explore ideas of tradition, power, persecution, and humanity’s fraught relationship with the land. It’s an admirably strange, haunting, and intellectually ambitious work from an exciting new voice in British theatre.”
The Bounds continues to play at the Royal Court Theatre until the 13th July.