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They Say: Cool Hand Luke Reviews Roundup

The main problem with this brisk, trite reworking is that under Andrew Loudon's direction it lacks any sense of the menace and brutality that Pearce describes so vividly. The sun shone so fiercely on the Florida chain gang that some first-timers never made it through day one. But here, on Edward Lipscomb’s over-designed, naturalistic set, the company of prisoners gently waft their tools in a cheery orange glow while barely breaking a sweat. Their relationship with supposedly sadistic guards verges on the matey, and any episodes of stage violence – plus a tussle with a rubber snake – are cringingly hammy.

Verdict 2/5 Simon Edge for The Express (Read the full review here)

Warren is good value - deadpan when he needs to be, and always watchable. He plays the banjo competently and the mouth organ rather better. But Luke's story doesn't feel truly worth telling. And while there is some solid support, principally from Lee Boardman as his burly fellow inmate Dragline, the other characters are mostly under defined. There are musical interludes, passionately performed by Sandra Marvin in a gospel style. Besides adding a skin-deep religiosity, these underscore themes that hardly need making explicit. They're symptomatic of a larger clunkiness. Flashbacks to Luke's wartime experience suggest that what he really wants to escape is his traumatic past, yet they are unsatisfactorily condensed, with actors switching abruptly between different characters.

Verdict ** Henry Hitchings for The Evening Standard (Read the full review here)

The supporting cast are led by Lee Boadman as Dragline, Luke’s loyal disciple and eventual biographer, and Richard Brake as the sadistic Boss Godfrey (no prison drama would be complete without an inexplicably violent guard). But they, along with Warren, are too often let down by a script and a production that struggle with the same issues that The Shawshank Redemption failed to address two years ago – namely, how to make such familiar narrative territory come alive for a 21st-century theatregoing public. By the climax, it was extremely difficult to care about our hero’s fate.

Verdict ** Theo Bosanquet for WhatsonStage (Read the full review here)

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