Pains of Youth

What the popular press had to say...

"I thought the play blackly exhilarating in its ruthless (often mordantly amusing) anatomy of anomie...The production has a stunningly imaginative coherence of style."
Paul Taylor for Independent

"The succcess of Mitchell's revival, however, lies in taking a potentially overheated play and treating it as a forensic analysis of a doomed, death-haunted generation."
Michael Billington for The Guardian

"Something about this version of Ferdinand Bruckner's 1926 play doesn't quite work."
William McEvoy for The Stage

"None of the characters is sympathetic and although the erotic charge has been extravagantly talked up, it is about as sexy as a cold hip bath."
Henry Hitchings for The Evening Standard

"Gripping. I've never seen a play before that anatomises post-adolescent choices so cruelly and so well, that illustrates the freedom of youth as both a joy and a terror to people playing musical chairs with adulthood."
Dominic Maxwell for The Times

"The only remotely enjoyable thing about this show is the moment when it stops."
Charles Spencer for Daily Telegraph

External links to full reviews from popular press
The Guardian - The Independent - The Times - Daily Telegraph