Review Roundup: What Did Critics Think of I'M NOT RUNNING?

Do I run? This is the question which is facing Pauline Gibson. She has spent her life as a doctor, the inspiring leader of a local health campaign. When she crosses paths with her old boyfriend, Jack Gould, a stalwart loyalist in Labour Party politics, she's faced with an agonising decision.

What's involved in sacrificing your private life and your peace of mind for something more than a single issue? Does she dare?

David Hare's explosive new play portrays the history of a twenty year intimate friendship and its public repercussions.

Cast: Siân Brooke, Owen Findlay, Alex Hassell, Harry Long, Joshua McGuire, Amaka Okafor, Roisin Rae, Liza Sadovy Nadia Williams and Brigid Zengeni.

Directed by Neil Armfield, set design by Ralph Myers, costume design by Sussie Juhlin-Wallén, lighting design by Jon Clark, sound design by Paul Arditti and music by Alan John.

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

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Marianka Swain, BroadwayWorld: The play's ponderous, dramatically static first half is particularly trying, containing a scene of students speaking like, well, a playwright several decades their senior, as well as an awkward nod towards #MeToo. But even in the stronger second, the oft-discussed relationship between Jack and Pauline never really catches fire until the climax.

Ann Treneman, The Times: I just didn't buy these characters. Gould is so stereotyped that he's down to one dimension. Gibson is two-dimensional at best. So forget the question of whether she's running. For me the real question is: Is she interesting? I'm afraid the answer to that is plain to see.

Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard: The pair's political power games replicate their personal ones. Yet for all the artful flashbacks, this is a static piece, and Neil Armfield's efficient, rather colourless production feels overexposed in the large space of the National Theatre's Lyttelton.

Michael Billington, The Guardian: David Hare has acute antennae and in his 17th new play for the National, he ranges over any number of current topics: single-issue politics, domestic abuse, the NHS, the state of the Labourparty. It pricks the mind and boasts a strong performance from Siân Brooke as another of Hare's complex female protagonists. Yet it is a less-than-perfect dramatic structure and has one puzzling piece of characterisation.

Tim Bano, The Stage: Unfortunately, there's nothing particularly interesting about the story or the characters. Whenever Hare raises an 'issue' - FGM, the NHS - it gets bounced back and forth between two characters in a bout of fact-spewing. They just baldly explain it, as if the playwright has forgotten that these people are meant to be characters.

Paul Taylor, The Independent: With I'm Not Running, Hare's 17th piece for the National, we were promised a play for the Corbyn era. The author, both a romantic socialist and a natural sceptic, is ideally placed to offer bracing insights into how Corbyn has transformed the nature of the party. But this is a bemusing work that seems to be operating in a kind of vacuum or alternative past. It's set in 2018, albeit with lots of flashbacks from 1997 (the year of the Blair landslide) onward. But it never once mentions Corbyn or Momentum or Brexit, and makes only passing references to the financial crisis.

Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph: The bad news is that I'm Not Running doesn't look like vintage Hare. It's certainly valuable Hare. Valid Hare. But in the intervening period, so much has gone on, not least in terms of the re-ascendancy of the hard left - that it's as if he has identified a 'thread' without fully putting his finger on the pulse.

Photo: Mark Douet

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