We round up the reviews for the revival of Tom Stoppard’s play, running at the theatre until the 31st January 2026.
The Guardian: **** “The climax requires Kendal to stand at the grave of a renowned writer and, so soon after the death of the former partner who wrote the scene, this must have risked fiction-fact fracture. But her courageous craft and the skill of the whole team give a fitting first epitaph performance to a dramatist whose loss is keenly felt in theatre generally but particularly at this one now.”
London Theatre.co.uk: **** “Still, you feel Stoppard this time out perhaps deliberately shifting into a minor key, as if to appease those for whom Arcadia required study guides to facilitate comprehension. Similarly concerned with questions of biography and mortality, and shuttling as Arcadia does between two points in time, Indian Ink in Kent’s handling of the text possesses a gentle, quietly seductive ebb and flow. It benefits additionally from two splendid leading actresses to ease what sometimes with this playwright can be difficult narrative points of entry.”
WhatsOnStage: **** “As Nirad Das, the artist who paints Flora, Gavi Singh Chera is extraordinarily powerful and tender, furious with the British and with her incomprehension – “I am Indian,” he snaps when she keeps accusing him of being exactly that – but drawn towards her warmth and difference. As his son Anish, seeking answers to the mysteries of his father’s life, Aaron Gill manages to share his gentleness, while Donald Sage Mackay is sharply amusing as the bumbling biographer Pike.”
The Reviews Hub: *** 1/2 “Designer Leslie Travers sets the action in a square garden edged in blue, evoking a sense of a comfortable milieu set apart from its surroundings: apt for a play that ought to be skewering colonialism more than it does. This is not Stoppard’s finest work, and the production is solid if not revelatory, but you cannot doubt the emotional heft here.”
All That Dazzles: **** “Returning to Indian Ink after originating the part of Flora Crewe both on airwaves and on the stage, Felicity Kendal is magnificent as Mrs Swan, née Crewe – the younger sister of Flora, whose passing we meet Eleanor decades after. Kendal’s is a more sardonic, dryly comic role, and she finds the wry humour in every line, making her final moments in which grief is finally allowed to enter the performance all the more powerful.”
London Theatre 1: ***** “The layering of Indian Ink is truly artful and immensely satisfying. Stopped sets up contracts and continuities that both repeat and reveal as the play unfolds. A favourite device used in Arcadia (1993) and also here is the split time frame. We jump back and forth from 1930 in India to 1990 in Staines and India.”
West End Best Friend: **** “As the final Stoppard revival in Hampstead Theatre’s recent run, Indian Ink provides a fitting conclusion. Its meditation on posterity, the shaping of narrative, and the traces we leave behind is imbued with added poignancy, and the play’s interplay of intimacy, art, and memory lingers gently. A celebration of human connection and the enduring reach of art.”
Lou Reviews: *** “This is a play that enthralls while keeping its audience behind carefully constructed barriers. A moment when past and present collides offers a sense of experimentation, but is brief.”
Broadway World: **** “Director Jonathan Kent’s staging, so visually appealing and so enamoured with the idea of creating beautiful tableaus on stage, is also concerned with what happens when we strip the facade away. There is a moment of full-frontal nudity, but also moments where everything feels just out of reach, a figure languishing behind a mosquito net, or a voice from a speaker floating over the audience.”
British Theatre Guide: “Director Jonathan Kent makes a play in which nothing much happens still be totally engaging, helped by designer Leslie whose flower-bedecked settings can change place and time in a quick blink or make them overlap. It is quite a long play, but it holds the attention whether discussing art or presenting people, lightened by laughter and setting out the evidence for the real relationship of Flora and Nirad. “
The Stage: *** “Revival of Tom Stoppard’s drama is richly atmospheric but falls short of brilliance.”
The Arts Desk: *** “It’s still a radio play to me, like much of Stoppard’s work, sui generis creations that reward listening and are bursting to share the knowledge he has dug up. In Kendal’s hands, though, this one also registers as wise, and suffused in that generosity of spirit he made his own.”
Theatre Vibe: “Director Jonathan Kent has worked skilfully with the cast, all of whom deliver believable performances. Ruby Ashbourne Serkis is particularly impressive; on stage for most of the play, she captures Flora’s determination to live each day fully, knowing her time is limited. Felicity Kendal brings just the right balance of presence and gentle eccentricity to Eleanor, a woman entering the early stages of dotage. As a small piece of trivia: when the play premiered in 1995, Kendal played Flora; now she portrays the surviving sister.”
The Standard: *** ” Indian Ink isn’t Stoppard’s best work, but Kent’s pleasing revival may serve as an appetizer for his modern classic, Arcadia, opening at the Old Vic next month.”
To book tickets visit: https://www.hampsteadtheatre.com/whats-on/2025/indian-ink/