'Frank McGuinness's new play began with a bang...Magpies shows you the visceral rage that tore our nation apart 400 years ago...William Houston's self-indulgent, erratic James...the dialogue is muscular, the acting powerful, the effect fiercely original'
TIMES
'Some dazzling coups de theatre and fine writing...McGuinness's approach...is oblique, impressionistic, literary...William Houston as King James offers another mesmerising study of sexually equivocal power...there are eloquent performances from Nigel Cooke as a slipper, self-loathing Cecil, Teresa Banham as James's isolated Danish queen and Vinette Robinson as Garnet's terrified, tortured servant'
GUARDIAN
'McGuinness, alluding to his outsider perspective as an Irish Catholic, vividly represents the Plot as a prophetic Masque of Darkness, ironically ablaze with...sumptuously staged by director Rupert Goold...Nigel Cooke's suave Cecil...Kevin Harvey's fine Equivocator'
EVENING STANDARD
