Review Roundup: Matthew Perry's THE END OF LONGING Opens in London

Christina Cole (The Magistrate, The Lightening Play), Jennifer Mudge (Into The Woods, Dutchman) and Lloyd Owen (Good People, The Bodyguard) join internationally acclaimed actor Matthew Perry (Friends, The Odd Couple) in the World Premiere of Perry's playwriting debut, THE END OF LONGING, at the Playhouse Theatre, London, now through 14 May 2016.

Perry's fast-paced and bittersweet, comic new play is helmed by the critically acclaimed and award-winning director Lindsay Posner (She Stoops To Conquer, Hayfever), reuniting the pair following their first West End collaboration on Sexual Perversity in Chicago at the Comedy Theatre in 2003.

Meet Jack, Stephanie, Joseph and Stevie: four lost souls, entering their forties and searching for meaning. After sharing one raucous night together in a downtown Los Angeles bar, their lives become irreversibly entwined in a rollercoaster journey that forces them to confront the darker sides of their relationships.

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

Laura Jones, BroadwayWorld: And while it takes some time for the first act to get going, director Lindsay Posner ensures the audience is kept entertained and intrigued throughout the second act. The production feels like a sitcom, although that's not necessarily a bad thing - it makes this an easy to watch play. Certain characters are pretty much Friends characters transported to the London stage. Joseph lacks intelligence, while Stevie is desperate for a baby - so basically they're Joey and Monica. On the whole however, Perry's writing is funny and given all of the problems he has gone through personally with alcohol addiction, it feels as though the audience gets a real insight into the problems Perry himself faced...I have no doubt that Friends fans will be flocking to see the play - although some may leave underwhelmed.

Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph: ...there's little disguising the fact that it is essentially a dud. Does the actor not have friends who could have gently pointed out that The End of Longing is a promising first effort but, even aided by his presence, it lacks the dramatic merit to make the exposing leap to the West End stage? Those who've followed his career, and his struggles with alcohol and drugs, might counter that Perry's involvement is what makes it worth seeing him play Jack, a drunken, abrasive, louche photographer. But the characterisation is so generic and the performance so restrained there's too little sense of private demons being confronted in public. If anything, the evening feels like a creative writing exercise of minor therapeutic value -- with a curious indebtedness to the sitcom that made Perry's name.

Michael Billington, The Guardian: Matthew Perry is a likable actor who brings with him a fund of goodwill from his 10-year stint as Chandler Bing in Friends. In writing, and starring in, his first play he has stuck closely to the format of the TV series: short scenes, smart lines, characters trying to make sense of their relationships. But what works in half-hour bites on television looks decidedly thin on the stage...Perry irons out the contradictions in his characters, who change but never really develop. Each has a single, dominant quality which remains unexplored...Lindsay Posner directs with his customary efficiency...But, while the play clearly aims to deal with four loners struggling to come to terms with early middle-age, it feels more like an extended sitcom in which there is little going on behind the lines.

Michael Coveney, WhatsOnStage: The End of Longing, in which Perry plays a battered, alcoholic and socially inconsiderate 40 year-old photographer, Jack, is a smart and painfully honest new play he has written - his first - to both reconsider the kind of relationships we followed inFriends and exorcise his own well-publicised demons of addiction...The writing is wired, raw, politically incorrect and very funny, and it's given a sharp kick in the goolies by some superb performances from all four actors in Lindsay Posner's shrewd, on-the-nose production, monologues and terse exchanges, often in very short scenes...Perry's a novice playwright, but one of great promise, and that sort of detail, and confidence, may follow in due course.

Matt Trueman, Variety: His playwriting debut isn't remotely autobiographical -- he plays Jack, an alcoholic photographer -- but it's obviously rooted in experience. It might be quite courageous, were it not so awkward to watch -- a star vehicle with its wheels falling off, and its star never quite in control. As it is, it's hard not to feel that both actor and audience are being exploited...Mostly though, watching Perry play Jack, an unrepentant functioning alcoholic, is pretty unedifying. Not just because the material's beneath a beloved comic talent, but because these days, this beloved comic talent seems beneath himself too..."The End of Longing" gets stuck in sitcomville...Director Lindsay Posner gets the script up on its feet -- just about. But sitting through it, it's more a case of longing for the end.

Leslie Felperin, The Hollywood Reporter: This slight, skittish comedy-drama features Perry as a self-confessed alcoholic who begins dating a $2,500-an-hour sex worker, played by Jennifer Mudge. The deal is supposedly that she won't criticize his drinking if he doesn't take issue with her profession: basically a cutesy version of Leaving Las Vegas but without the vomit, rape and operatic display of alcoholic self-destruction, plus lots more sitcom-y one-liners. The result is amusing for the first half-hour or so, with some genuinely well-turned zingers. But over the duration the glibness grates. The female characters reveal themselves to be little more than caricatures, and the second half devolves into a flaccid, hospital-set melodrama that's there just to set up one key monologue, delivered by Perry's Jack at an AA meeting. As a psycho-dramatic mea culpa exercise, it's fine but should have stayed in the therapist's office. Exposed on a public stage, it plays like a quarter-developed film script that couldn't find backing at home.

Chris Omaweng, London Theatre 1: If you can stomach the zany characters and the effing this and effing that, the punchlines in the script are very much to be enjoyed...What of Matthew Perry's performance? It's stilted and clunky in the first half, if I'm honest, even if this is in the context of his character being the sort of man he is. Still, he seems to be shown up a little by his fellow actors on stage, and it is not until a powerful monologue well into Act Two that he fully convinces and has the audience enthralled; he does vulnerability better than brashness. He seems to be enjoying himself on stage, though, an aspect of theatrical performance that should never be underestimated.

Jim Compton-Hall, The Upcoming: Matthew Perry's new show is a brilliantly funny story of the various problems we create for ourselves...It's a dark comedy, deathly serious and almost tragic in some places, but fantastically witty throughout...His writing is sharp, tremendously funny and really, very honest...Perry's performance as Jack, the alcoholic, is raw and aggressive...Perry's portrayal of the addict digs deeper to a far more truthful and powerful representation than most pop culture allows for, giving the audience a glimpse into the mind of an addict and why they can't just stop.

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Photo Credit: Helen Maybanks