Reviews
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✭✭✭✭✭ superb production by Landark Productions and Galway International Arts Festival, directed with pace and passion by Walsh himself, the whole meaning of the text is beautifully and bravely teased out by a magnificent cast, featuring Domhnall Gleeson, Clare Barrett and Aoife Duffin, with Seán Carpio as the drummer, and a whole Irish national theatre of famous voices on the show’s astounding soundtrack
– The Scotsman | READ full review here
✭✭✭✭✭ Domhnall Gleeson on soul-shuddering form… This year’s flagship play … is the new work by Enda Walsh, with Gleeson its big-name star – the combined effect is dynamite…
– The Telegraph | READ full review here
✭✭✭✭✭ Domhnall Gleeson is outstanding in Enda Walsh’s revelatory new play … The production, as directed by Walsh himself, is pitch-perfect, hilarious, terrifying and revelatory. Unforgettable.
– The Observer | READ full review here
an actor’s impact is physical, the imprint of a great performance a bodily impression that stays with you for ever … every time Gleeson’s eyes rake the stage you wince at how much this matters to him and how little to his helpers … those of us lucky enough to see his bereft, shuddering frame, his face an unpretty mess of tears, won’t forget it.
– The Sunday Times | READ full review here
✭✭✭✭✭ Gleeson’s performance is a powerhouse. He runs the whole range of emotions from impotent victimhood to volcanic rage and it’s impossible to take your eyes off him throughout... Walsh’s anger at the injustice of the situation burns with searing honesty throughout… It’s chilling, powerful, and unforgettable
– WhatsOnStage | READ full review here
✭✭✭✭✭ A taut balance of levity and sorrow is carefully maintained by a talented ensemble. Clare Barrett is in her element. Her signature deadpan comedy finds new feet as she delivers a persuasive and potent performance. Aoife Duffin’s physicality powers the play. Gleeson is a force, in the true definition of the word. His performance repeatedly cuts you to the bone.
– Irish Times | READ full review here
✭✭✭✭✭ jaw dropping performances… Go, look, listen … Medicine never tasted this good … Barrett was put on this earth to play Mary, being breathtakingly brilliant as an actor’s actor par excellence … a sublime Aoife Duffin in brief, passing moments that can steal your heart.
– The Arts Review |READ full review here
✭✭✭✭✭ ‘Magnificent performances…outstanding actors.’
-The Sunday Times Ireland | READ full review here
✭✭✭✭ Enda Walsh’s flamboyant and funny new play … flamboyant, funny and surreal …. John Kane … is played superbly by Domhnall Gleeson …. as the play goes on, absurdist comedy give way to dark despair
– The Guardian | READ full review here
✭✭✭✭ Walsh’s melding of the madcap and the tender never ever loses sight of its own artifice… As words tumble out of John, played by Domhnall Gleeson with a beautifully contrary sense of determined vulnerability
– The Herald | READ full review here
✭✭✭✭ Enda Walsh’s surreal and chillingly absurdist depiction of institutionalisation, performance and madness… Jamie Vartan’s perfectly realised set… memory, madness and theatre intertwine in a world where nothing you perceive can be trusted
– The Stage | READ full review here
✭✭✭✭ Enda Walsh’s Medicine is equal doses humour and deep disquiet… There’s real joy in seeing Duffin and Barrett spar as the Marys: Barrett is masterfully overwrought, full of vain actorly swagger, Duffin more jittery and uncertain… Alongside these full-pelt performances, one of the stars is Helen Atkinson’s sound design… A bitter pill, but one that we should get on and swallow
– Financial Times | READ full review here
✭✭✭✭ Raw, absurdist and scathing … elegantly paced … Walsh’s script draws on the lush tradition of Joyce’s playful use of language – and Beckett’s convoluted dialogues and sense of cosmic meaningless… moments of poetic beauty are all the more potent within this explicit condemnation of the abuse suffered by those deemed unfit for society
– The List | READ full review here
✭✭✭✭ Enda Walsh’s sophisticated, bruising but ultimately hopeful play has much to say about the treatment of mental illness – but also about theatre itself… a convincingly unravelled Domhnall Gleeson … a brilliantly brittle Aoife Duffin … an excruciatingly bolshy Clare Barrett
– iNews | READ full review here
✭✭✭✭ Strange and surreal, Medicine is a sublime piece of theatre… Matching the narrative’s intensity are a formidable cast of actors… Front and centre, of course, is Gleeson, who is magnificent as John
– The Wee Review | READ full review here
✭✭✭✭ absurdist comedy becomes dystopian despair as Mr Gleeson’s performance holds us rapt… a surreal fantasy… Walsh and Gleeson make John’s distress feel frighteningly real
– Daily Mail | READ full review here