Review Roundup: GETTING THROUGH IT on the West End

Former Children's Laureate, poet and writer, Michael Rosen, is now presenting his new one-person show Getting Through It, exploring themes of love, loss and mortality, at The Old Vic.

Getting Through It is a powerful, deeply personal yet universally relatable, double bill of monologues and poetry. In the first part, The Death of Eddie, Michael explores his experience after losing his 18-year-old son to meningitis, recalling the strange and contradictory mix of emotions felt after the unexpected loss. This story, memorably captured in Michael's children's book The Sad Book, is told in vivid and poetic detail. In the second part, Many Kinds of Love, Michael recounts his 48-day period in intensive care, after contracting COVID-19 early in the pandemic, and having to face his own mortality. Both stories are told with Michael's signature positivity, humour and poetry. Together, the two pieces are a testimony to the spirit of recovery.

Michael is known internationally for his work as a bestselling children's author and poet, heralded for children's classics such as We're Going on a Bear Hunt and The Sad Book. Michael held the esteemed position of Children's Laureate between 2007–09 and was awarded the PEN Pinter Prize in 2023. He is also a prolific author and poet for adults, exemplified by his family memoir, The Missing: The True Story of My Family in World War II.

Let's see what the critics are saying...

Chris Omaweng, LondonTheatre1: Other times, however, much of the audience knew what was going on – I don’t recall, for instance, ever being asked to use a pulse oximeter, and therefore had no idea why a result of 58 (as Rosen’s was before he was admitted to hospital) drew audible gasps from the audience at the Old Vic. The lack of sentimentality made for an engaging experience, as were the inclusions of conversations Rosen had with hospital staff in the weeks and months, and even years, after he was discharged. A unique and extraordinary show.

Joshua Korber Hoffman, London Unattached: Rosen, with his gift for reading, holds the audience in his large hands. He is frailer now than he once was, but he has a grandfatherly twinkle in his eye. As I believe they used to say before the internet: “I would listen to him read the phone book.” Combined with his writing – vivid yet unpretentious, poetic almost without one noticing – Rosen seems to conjure the warm flicker of a campfire from the darkness of his loss.

Average Rating: 100.0%