Review Roundup: THE ELEPHANT MAN Starring Bradley Cooper Opens at Theatre Royal Haymarket

Scott Ellis's acclaimed production of The Elephant Man is currently playing at Theatre Royal Haymarket in London. Prior to the London engagement, The Elephant Man played at the Booth Theatre in New York City where it has received four Tony® Award nominations including 'Best Revival of a Play', 'Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play' for Bradley Cooper, 'Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play' for Alessandro Nivola and 'Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play' for Patricia Clarkson.

Based on the real life of Joseph Merrick, The Elephant Man tells the story of a 19th-century British man who became a star of the traveling freak show circuit. When the renowned Dr Treves takes Merrick under his care, he is astonished by the man's brilliant intelligence, unshakable faith and, most of all, his resounding desire for love and understanding. He introduces Merrick to the beautiful actress Mrs. Kendal, who is deeply touched by this pure and genuine soul. As a complex friendship blossoms among the three, Treves and Kendal struggle to protect Merrick from a world of questionable intentions.

The Elephant Man on Broadway has Scenic and Projection Design by Timothy R. Mackabee, Costume Design by Clint Ramos, Lighting Design by Philip S. Rosenberg, Original Music and Sound Design by John Gromada, Hair and Wig Design by Charles G. LaPointe and casting by Calleri Casting.

The Elephant Man is produced in London by James L. Nederlander in association with Michael Codron.

Let's see what the critics have to say...

Ben Lawrence, The Telegraph: Cynics will question the gym-toned, handsome Cooper's motives for doing this. ("Look at me playing ugly. I have no vanity!") But this is not a superficial performance: its strengths lie in its subtleties. As he is saved from a lifetime on the Victorian freakshow circuit by Dr Frederick Treves, Cooper slowly, carefully, unpeels Merrick's personality - the man behind the deformity.

Quentin Letts, The Daily Mail: From the moment he assumes Merrick's lopsided stance, he becomes Elephant Man totally in our eyes. He achieves this simply by voice and bearing. There is no mask, no plastic fakery, no false hunchback. This makes it a singularly theatrical experience. Simply by dint of his art, good-looking Mr Cooper persuades us that he is this pitiable, and soon engagingly likeable grotesque.

Michael Billington, The Guardian: Bradley Cooper is very good indeed as the eponymous hero of Bernard Pomerance's play. Eschewing medical realism, Cooper simply evokes the malformations of Joseph Merrick's body. Even his gait, with left knee permanently crooked, suggests a man whose trunk cannot sustain the weight of an outsize head. Cooper, a fine actor, also makes you believe in the romantic sensibility that existed inside Merrick's distorted frame.

Stu Black, Londonist: Cooper's physical performance is an appropriately painful-looking study in asymmetry, which contrasts sometimes too well with Scott Ellis's overly ordered production. The director's positioning of the actors, for example, seems intended to evoke a rigidly formal Victorian society, which is not only a cliche but one that has the frequent effect of hampering the drama.

Paul Taylor, The Independent: Cooper (twice Oscar-nominated and now up for a Tony for this) stands naked apart from a pair of under-shorts. Then, as the doctor points to the various malformations on a blown-up photograph of Merrick, he proceeds to transform himself, bit by contorted bit, from Hollywood hunk to misshapen outcast. The lips twist grotesquely; a hip collapses; the right hand is bunched into a knobbly stump.

Natasha Tripney, The Stage: While there is one powerful moment of tenderness and emotional exposure between Cooper and Clarkson, which they both handle with delicacy, the rest of Ellis' production is fitful and underpowered. Much of this is down to the play itself, which is bitty in structure and quite dry in tone. It might work better as a chamber piece but feels rather marooned on the West End stage.

Camilla Long, The Sunday Times: Please, please, please can we discuss the sheer, desperate, fanny-squeaking vanity of Bradley "Manscaping" Cooper, a man so completely obsessed with his own twinkling boobies that he believes he can survive the hideously ugly role of John Merrick in The Elephant Man on stage in the West End? Cooper feels "a deep personal connection with Merrick", a Victorian man so tragically deformed that one of his doctors said he was covered in "brown cauliflower".

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