'De Angelis’s writing is even funnier than it is stimulating'

'Max Stafford-Clark’s production has the enjoyable abundance signalled by Julian McGowan’s set, which embraces theatre boxes, memorabilia, props... How could it be otherwise when the cast includes Ian Redford’s blustering, twitching Johnson (for whom the theatre is a place where you get a sore bum watching men “prance and gesticulate in clothes not their own”), Owen Sharpe’s forlorn, feverish Goldsmith (so poor he eats the candles he writes by), thesps ranging from Nigel Cooke’s baleful Macklin to Monica Dolan’s genially sluttish Peg Woffington, plus Burke, Reynolds and a rather too silent Boswell?'

'Comedy needn’t be soft and comforting. It can be mischievous and subversive. You see the bind in which Jason Watkins’s spirited yet sly Garrick finds himself, trapped as he is by economic, social and moral pressures. It’s a bind his descendants know even today. I haven’t seen it dramatised before with such infectious brio'

She Stoops to Conquer: 'simply funny and good-natured'

There are… serious comic pleasures to be had downstairs in the Lyttelton, with director Max Stafford-Clark's fascinating pairing of a new and old play that reverberate off each other. The new play is A Laughing Matter, a backstage theatrical comedy by April de Angelis that hilariously lives up to its title. Set in 1773, it finds a struggling writer, Oliver Goldsmith, desperately trying to get his new play put on by the great actor-manager of the day, David Garrick. That play, it turns out, is She Stoops to Conquer - and that's the play it's paired with in this double bill of Out-of-Joint productions. Both are wonderfully played by brilliant ensemble companies, and it's great fun to watch them both on a single day (though you can see them separately) and see them adapting to their different roles.

She Stoops to Conquer is 'A comedy without errors... with effervescent performances from the entire cast, it was impossible not to get caught up in the thrill of it all'

'exudes all-out fun and frivolity… the sheer verve of the exuberantly witty dialogue was quite enough to keep the 21st century audience at the National Theatre roaring with laughter. The crowd simply loved it'

'Out of Joint has often cleverly linked new plays and classics in the past but nothing has been quite as inspired as this pairing of Oliver Goldsmith's old favourite 'She Stoops to Conquer' with April De Angelis's specialy commissioned, robust portrait of theatre in the late eighteenth century, the time of Garrick and Goldsmith - the greatest actor of his age and the famous Irish playwright. It was Garrick who began the process of making theatre respectable, of trying to draw a line between performance and prostitution. The period is remembered for its acting but not for its plays, and De Angelis seeks to find out why, depicting a climate in which sentimentalised versions of the classics - Garrick himself doctored Shakespeare - were presented alongside morally uplifting, forgettable new plays too often written by clergymen who treated the theatre as another pulpit.

'De Angelis handles the historical material with assurance, true to the spirit if not always the letter of what actually happened... her play, Max Stafford-Clark's production and Julian McGowan's sumptuous designs are a celebration of theatre. She creates a lascivious, cursing, bickering, backstage world in which Garrick's actors constantly thwart his desire to make theatre respectable'

'The company is led by Jason Watkins' Garrick... Watkins impressively presents a man of many parts: a prectical joker who is narcissistic, stingy, concerned about his legacy, as well as hugely talented and likeable. he soars over the hurdle of how to present garrick's acting today, performing with such an outlandish passion and intensity that he is truly mesmerising'

'Ian Redford is as close to the real Dr Johnson as one could ever hope to see onstage, and Owen Sharpe makes a convincingly neurotic Goldsmith, the 'Oli G' of his day, in a fright of a wig that's probably home to at least one nest of mice'

'Collisions of past and present are often the way of the future, and it's precisely that exciting juxtaposition that the National Theatre now offers in a terrific double bill by the touring company Out of Joint.

'She Stoops to Conquer, a handsome revival of a classic 18th-century English comedy, is paired with a hilarious new play that goes behind the scenes of its making and provides a stinging critique of a theatre economy that still prevails today. Audiences may no longer riot when displeased as they did then, but conservative tastes rather than a sense of adventure are still too often pandered to.

'In A Laughing Matter, a backstage theatrical comedy by April De Angelis that vividly lives up to its title, a struggling young playwright called Oliver Goldsmith is desperately trying to get his new play put on by David Garrick, the great actor-manager of the day. Under pressure from his company's patron, Garrick chooses a safer, less radical, clerical comedy and loses out on the premiere of what would become a big hit for She Stoops to Conquer.

Seen together, as you can either in a single day or separately, you observe the backstage shenanigans and then what all the fuss was about. You also see a superbly versatile company of 11 actors gloriously inhabit both plays.'

'what a delight A Laughing Matter turns out to be with its backstage cavortings surrounding She Stoops's premiers and a cast of historical characters that includes Garrick, Dr Johnson, Goldsmith himself, and Garrick's Drury Lane theatre company.

'Like her earlier Playhouse Creatures, De Angelis manages to combine modern and classical elements in a brilliant and amusing exploration of theatrical issues, styles and personal tragedies'

Daily Telegraph - Charles Spencer (19/12/02)

'the wonderful scenes in which Marlow mistakes a private house for an inn and his father's oldest friend for the landlord, are irrisistible as always' (She Stoops)

'Jason Watkins is outstanding as Garrick, sharp as nails, ruthlessly pragmatic yet also sympathetic, and absolutely thrilling' (A Laughing Matter)

The Guardian - Michael Billington (19/12/02)

'Ian Redford is splendidly apoplectic as Hardcastle, Jane Wood is genuinely touching as his wife' (She Stoops)

'a spirited production' (A Laughing Matter)

Daily Mail - Michael Coveney (18/12/02)