Death of England: Closing Time review – bombshell rants fail to land as the men watch the footie
6 / 10
The cast juggle between multiple characters deftly but the tone is too screamy for the tension to build, and some deliveries are so fast that lines are swallowed. Several of the high moments of the play are lost to this, including Carly’s bombshell social-media rant. You glimpse a stronger, more searing play in a few scenes, such as Denise’s sabre-sharp diatribe on King Charles’s coronation (“A 74-year-old man is being showered with a billion quid’s worth of stolen bling”). But these are individual vignettes that do not gel as a whole, the action too hectic yet too long and loose.
