Damian Lewis is amazing. The entire cast is brilliant, really, but Damian as Alceste absolutely shines. There’s something about the cynical, hyperbolic way in which he delivers his lines that gives him a somewhat comedic yet powerful presence on-stage.

…is brilliantly presented by Lewis, who really spits out the many cleverly crafted insults placed in his mouth by Martin Crimp in his neatly rhyming version in English.

“…where you see the difference between an actor and a star. When Damian Lewis, the bilious anti-hero – or truth-telling hero – speaks, he makes you wonder why more plays aren’t written in verse. Alternately clenched with disgust and exploding into fountains of fulmination, he surfs the rhythm, and hits the rhymes as if they were thrown up by his disdain.

“…ranting, self-appointed social outcast, perversely proud of his gaucheries. And his rapid-fire delivery is excellent, like a Puritan hedge-preacher on full throttle.”

“…In Damian Lewis’s biting performance, he rails against mankind, longing to live in a disinfected white box he hates human nature so much. But when faced with Jennifer’s beauty and allure, he goes all soppy, excusing her flirtatious behaviour with other men by saying: “She’s young and beautiful.”…


There is a strange double irony in casting an inexperienced film star in a play that holds up the world of celebrity to coruscating attack. But the greatest compliment that can be paid to Knightley is that she holds her own as part of an ensemble of actors in Thea Sharrock’s sharp and enjoyable production who are all on very fine form – most notably Lewis, who brings to Alceste the perfect mixture of righteousness and ridiculousness…”

“Thea Sharrock’s revival of this 1996 contemporary update by Martin Crimp of Molière’s great satire against both the amoral courtly rumour-mill and courtly malpractice is an excellent, platinum-cast treat.


Played by a brilliantly tetchy and (to just the right degree) faintly ridiculous Damian Lewis, the misanthropic Alceste is transformed into a terminally disgruntled playwright in Crimp’s adaptation. The world he hates is the sycophantic, nepotistic, nihilistic media village of sloppy, relativistic postmodernism. So if there’s a practice he’d be almost bound to abhor it is that of casting film stars in plays such as his, and he’d dislike it all the more because the major flaw in his armour is that he has allowed himself to fall for a bitchy Hollywood starlet called Jennifer.”