It will divide critics and audiences. Some will accuse director Andrew Steggall of creating a pretentious, directionless muddle with a sing-song narration from Rebecca Lenkiewicz. They are wrong. What Steggall had done is find the heart of the play, stripping back the conventions of language to allow it to beat clearly and audibly. (Jeremy Austin, The Stage)

The London Theatre has always prided itself on being multinational and multicultural. But what is currently on the stage Kevin Spacey’s Old Vic has to be something of a breakthrough. It is the first British-Iraqi co-production with a cast of six and an on-stage orchestra of 12 drawn from both nations. Current events are of course the motivation, and here the cause, but do not expect an update. Stravinsky’s classic from 1918 has been left in its own timelessness, and though the setting is a bombed out war landscape, there is no attempt at contemporary uniforms or references. In stead something much more complex is going on….The success here has been in dusting off an old piece of music theatre and giving it a political punch the like of which it has never had before.”  (Sheridon Morley, Daily Express)