Find out what the critics had to say about Roger Allam’s performance as Winston Churchill in Churchill in Moscow at Orange Tree Theatre, London…
… Any chance to see Roger Allam close up — the director Tom Littler makes full use of the Orange Tree’s intimate in-the-round space — should never be passed up. Allam gives us a PM who is an enthralling mixture of frailty and puckish humour, vanity and self-doubt. Although he pronounces “Nazi” in authentic Churchillian style, Allam doesn’t go in for all-out vocal mimicry. Making his first entrance in a trademark boiler suit, he starts probing his ultra-wary host.
The Times, Roger Allam makes an enthralling wartime leader, 12 February 2025
★★★★ Roger Allam excels in Howard Brenton’s new historical play (…) Three-time Olivier Award winner Roger Allam is a coup for the Orange Tree and is a wonderful Winston Churchill, astutely eschewing any form of direct mimicry of the man. Allam is unfraid of long silences, opting for gravitas and sudden bursts of energy. There is no caricature, just character.
Aliya Al-Hassan for BroadwayWorld, Churchill in Moscow, 12 February 2025
Dominic Cavendish for The Telegraph, Churchill in Moscow: Roger Allam makes this engrossing historical drama unmissable, 12 February 2025
… played with witty precision by Roger Allam… Allam beautifully eschewing caricature as Churchill to find a smooth, watchful patrician given to flashes of temper and sudden pools of melancholy…
Sarah Hemming for The Financial Times, Roger Allam stars in a timely reflection on realpolitik, 12 February 2025
★★★★ Allam is properly posh, although, as he plays various Churchills (private/public/as heard by Russians) sensibly plays down the slushy booming of standard impersonations.
Mark Lawson for The Guardian, The British bulldog’s gripping meeting with Stalin, 12 February 2025
★★★★ The star casting of Roger Allam as Churchill is a triumph, a portrait of a leader who isn’t used to things not going his way and is certainly cantankerous but not a caricature.
Julia Rank for WhatsOnStage, Churchill in Moscow starring Roger Allam at Orange Tree Theatre, 12 February 2025
★★★★ Roger Allam masterfully captures the complexity of Churchill’s character, starting off sulky and ill-tempered before the jovial wit comes out when the heavy drinking of vodka shots and chewing of suckling pig is in full swing.
George Simpson for Daily Express, Stalin and British Bulldog’s atmospheric WW2 booze up, 12 February 2025
★★★★ Heading the cast, Roger Allam resists a broad Churchill impersonation, subtly capturing the prime minister’s iconic intonation, especially when struggling to keep his temper, his strained self-control causing him to slip into a tremulous, floridly verbose register.
Dave Farnoli for The Stage, Churchill in Moscow, 12 February 2025
★★★★★ Roger Allam and Peter Forbes are sensational as the leads. (…) And, while the script is erudite, authentic, inventive and often hugely funny, it enters a higher plane in the hands of Allam and Forbes who embody the two protagonists to perfection: one English posh, the other with a peasant’s accent. Both so precisely inhabit the moment that we can almost hear their brains working. And as, together, they bravely circumvent the terror of the future they must endeavour to shape, we feel too their human vulnerability.
Mark Conway for Morning Star, Rom-Communism, 13 February 2025
Allam triumphs in a performance accenting Winston Churchill without parody. There’s little harrumphing and Brenton’s language is too keen to allow a “moreover” to drawl out. But Allam semaphores Churchill’s stature with gleaming turns and flashes of wit. Peter Forbes embodies Joseph Stalin alarmingly well. Full of his imagined burl and strut, and occasional boggle. Neither man has stumbled against a “no” or “niet” of stature before: here both of them size up the hopeful monster in each other.
Simon Jenner for Plays International, Churchill in Moscow, 13 February 2025
…an excellent cast headed by Roger Allam as the British PM, surely something of a coup for this small Off-West End venue. (…) Allam’s Churchill is a mix of imperial rhetoric, undiplomatic impatience and schoolboy enthusiasm, while Peter Forbes’s Stalin, who speaks with a West Country accent (an equivalent to his Georgian roots), is part genial hard-drinking host, part paranoid Tsar and part indulgent father. The onstage dynamic of the two is at times electric, and sometimes farcical.
Aleks Sierz for The Arts Desk, Churchill in Moscow, thought-provoking language and power games, 13 February 2025
★★★★
Patrick Marmion for The Daily Mail, The night Churchill and Stalin got sloshed on vodka, 14 February 2025
It’s a pleasure to hear Roger Allam fit his mellifluous tones to Churchill’s familiar cadences (…)
Nick Curtis for The Evening Standard, Churchill in Moscow: bursting with political playfulness, 14 February 2025
(…) combining two sure-fire box-office draws – the name of Churchill and the person of Roger Allam.
Susanna Clapp for The Guardian, This Week in Theatre, 16 February 2025
Tickets are sold out.
Following its run at the OT, Churchill in Moscow will be available to stream through OT On Screen from Tuesday 11 – Friday 14 March.
Went to see this on February 6th at Richmond, it was superb. So great to be able to see the actors up close, especially Roger Allam. Hope it will make it to the West End.