'Playwright Lila Raicek offers a punchy and poisonous spin on Ibsen's original play... Raicek unflinchingly investigates the imbalance of the power dynamic inherent in that age-old clichรฉ of the older professional man and the younger impressionable woman... Grandageโs robustly elegant production guides us confidently through Raicekโs appealingly murky mixture of sex, power and professional status, using the wife to demonstrate how female empowerment and solidarity can curdle when it comes to sexual jealousy.' - the i
'In Lila Raicekโs modern take, his wife โ clever, accomplished, and angryโ is the fulcrum. This is very much a play about the consequence of infidelity on a marriage, and a wife's pained rage...Female camaraderie, treachery, and generational difference is explored. There are moments of great intensity, and real candescence to the writing...The focus on the women is interesting and intriguing. This a story not of genius men building castles in the air for their princesses but of what destruction they wreak in their homes in so doing.' - the Guardian
โRaicekโs feminist reimagining should be obligatory viewing. Her writing is full of snap, vigour and provocative jokes that get the audience squirmingโฆ Women get all the best lines here, making it a welcome antidote to Ibsenโs original. Raicek is fascinated by sexual power plays and the complex ways in which women betray each other and themselves... She cut her teeth working on bingeable TV dramas Younger and Gossip Girl. That training shows in the way her play sweeps you along into a breezy study of a great man whose scheming wife gets the last laugh.โ - the Independent
โExplosive workโฆThe stage crackles with dangerous energy. At the climax, Raicek writes a cathartic, blood-and-guts scene where all the long-buried truths of the relationship are laid bare. Dramatically, this is pure gold.โ - the Spectator
โA prodigious New York talentโฆand the talk of the town. Raicek has a poetic and pathological ear and a writing style somewhere between Ibsen, Patrick Marber and Luca Guadagino.โ - Tatler Magazine
โItโs Ibsen meets Succession. Itโs a twisted climbing frame of human misery that Raicek has constructed and the actors make the most of itโฆit makes for a uniquely satisfying night of theatre.โ - the new European