The notices are in for Tartuffe (Remixed), Darren Raymond’s rewriting of Molière’s 1664 farce for a Nigerian-Jamaican family gathering in London for a wedding, with Mark Rylance as the bogus cleric Pastor Blake and a company drawn largely from Raymond’s Intermission Youth. Twenty outlets have filed and the arithmetic is warm rather than rapturous, but the interesting thing is where the warmth sits. Almost nobody writes about this production without naming Morenike Onajobi, making her professional debut as Kemi, and the praise for Nakeba Buchanan, Usifu Jalloh and Suzette Llewellyn is close to unanimous. Rylance divides them: most find the false teeth and the oily piety irresistible, while The Reviews Hub thinks the performance too broad to sustain the con, theartsdesk would happily lose the false teeth, and the Guardian questions why a white pastor is presiding at all. Rhyming couplets, an opening stretch several critics found under-rehearsed, and a closing ten minutes one reviewer calls the most moving of his year.
The verdict: twenty reviews in, and every one of them carries a star rating: two five-star notices, eleven four-star, two at three and a half and five at three, which averages 3.8 out of 5. The company is where the critics agree – Morenike Onajobi’s professional debut as Kemi is singled out again and again – and Mark Rylance is where they part company, cherished by most as a comic grotesque and judged by four to be playing in a different register from everyone around him.
What are critics saying about Tartuffe (Remixed)?
The Spy in the Stalls
Reviewer: Elizabeth Botsford
Molière was denied a church burial by the institution he satirised. By the end of this show, you can see why. Although entirely predictable, the denouement is the most moving ten minutes of theatre I have seen this year. The family returns to their faith, without any corrupt and corrupting mediator. The women have untangled the knotty problem, re-jigging the tribal power structure. In the end, the extended family submits not just to their Creator but to the higher purposes of strength, unity and peace within the tribe.
Read Elizabeth Botsford’s full review at The Spy in the Stalls
London Pub Theatres
“blasting the cobwebs from Molière’s wig”
Reviewer: Nilgün Yusuf
Mark Rylance as Pastor Blake, the amoral imposter, fuses pantomime villain with Dick Emery’s vicar. Shifty as they come and dodgy as hell, there’s no end to his wickedness. With sticky-out teeth and a cloying quality, he’s the type of antagonist an audience loves to hate and wants to see punished. Rylance, “a wolf in shepherd’s dress,” gleefully embraces his role as the token white man and a baddie at that, in a super-talented all-black cast that dazzles across four generations. All the actors in this show and many of the production team are part of the Intermission family and either trained with or supported the youth theatre through workshops or mentoring.
WhatsOnStage
Reviewer: Alun Hood
Molière’s Tartuffe here becomes scheming, hypocritical Pastor Blake (a barnstorming Mark Rylance, sporting a pair of false teeth that would be better suited to horse than human, and all bent out of shape like a broken coat hanger, endlessly preening as he casts stricken sidelong glances and mirthless smiles at the audience). He’s a duplicitous horror-show of a man but, of course, utterly fabulous theatrical company.
Everything Theatre
“A sunshine-filled reinvention of Molière’s classic, full of energy and farcical humour, but with a surprisingly complex seam that adds rich depth”
Reviewer: Mary Pollard
The talented cast is beautifully blended, with Raymond’s carefully outlined characters creating intergenerational and cultural resonances. They have distinct roles, from the stereotypical Caribbean Grandma (Suzette Llewellyn) to Mokonen’s dutiful daughter, to Jalloah’s dauntingly domineering father figure. Christopher Mbaki as D-Miz is outstanding as a voice of modern possibility. Most importantly, Raymond gives a respectful voice to strong women, Adanna articulating succinctly with the clarity of youth, and Nakeba Buchanan delivering heart-rending poignancy as the victim-shamed Elmire, adding a whole extra level to the production.
All That Dazzles
“A riotous reworking of Molière packed with sharp rhymes, big laughs, vibrant culture and a brilliant Mark Rylance”
Reviewer: Phil McCullough
Mark Rylance delivers a hysterically funny performance as Pastor Blake and he is wonderfully obsequious, with awkward mannerisms and a constant air of nervous politeness that had me laughing out loud. His characterisation comes alive the moment he stumbles onto the stage and he has a ‘butter wouldn't melt’ quality that makes him appear meek, shy and utterly devoted to God. Underneath that innocent exterior is a smiling assassin using his white collar to disguise the manipulative conman beneath. Rylance clearly understands exactly how far to push the character, and watching Pastor Blake's polite exterior slowly collide with his darker intentions is enormous fun.
Plays To See
Reviewer: Lennon Hu
I was baffled when, after the final bows, Mark Rylance announced that this production was Onajobi’s professional debut. She hits the stage with such force, driving the plot, flowing through the language and holding the audience in a way that recalls Rylance himself. Dorine’s original role as the servant who plots Tartuffe’s downfall finds a fantastic counterpart here in the conflict between Kemi and Pastor Blake.
West End Best Friend
Reviewer: Nick Wayne
It’s exciting on so many levels. The remix puts Jamaican and Nigerian culture and traditions on stage, providing insight into the challenges of cultures merging, clashing and attracting the diverse audience that theatre needs to appeal to for its future success. It weaves the themes of today’s society into the plot with ease and great skill. We see changing attitudes of generations to religion, sex and cultural heritage. We can feel the sense of grief and love that affects us all. We recognise the challenge of respecting and following parental guidance when it is against our natural instinct. And in an age when scammers seem to constantly try to intrude in our lives, we recognise the dangers of trusting a stranger because he represents a respected authority.
London Box Office
Reviewer: Stuart King
Brought together under the Intermission Ensemble umbrella (including Intermission Youth) elements of the play were decidedly under-rehearsed on opening night and a lack of familiarity with props was something of an issue, but such matters will bed-in over the course of the run and will largely go unnoticed by the average theatregoer. What does come through loud and clear is the phenomenal cast camaraderie, with performers helping each other through momentary lapses in delivery of the rhyming couplets and other ‘live theatre’ challenges.
LondonTheatre1
Reviewer: Mary Beer
Darren Raymond’s Tartuffe (Remixed) is rightly bawdy, bold and broad. I am cheered that this production grabs all that is farcical with two hands and rides it home. Of course it’s a vehicle for Mark Rylance – whose first appearance as Pastor Blake with mutant Turkey-teeth-on-crack – tells us everything is going to be played big; his comedy choppers all the better for chewing the scenery. But it’s also a true ensemble piece with the wider cast doing far more than serving as a backing chorus to Rylance.
The Upcoming
Reviewer: Thomas Messner
“Ultimately, this new interpretation of Molière confidently blends a highly specific familial portrait with a keen sense of broad, slapstick farce. Its laughs gain in volume throughout, culminating in a riotous, crowd-pleasing finish that feels well-equipped for a transfer to a bigger theatre. Whatever playwright Darren Raymond does next, attention ought to be paid.”
Plays International & Europe
Reviewer: Jeremy Malies
“Rylance goes right through his formidable toolkit to conjure up a rackety Graham Greene-style character. His only clothes (patched) are the clerical suit he stands up in. The family want him to minister to them but lady of the house Elmire (one of the few names to survive from the original) thinks he should stay at Premier Inn and is proved right. Playing this principal female character, Nakeba Buchanan turns in one of the best performances of a generally excellent night.”
Read Jeremy Malies’s full review in Plays International & Europe
Salterton Arts Review
Reviewer: Erin Caswell
“I’ve seen some reviews talking about Rylance’s performance and whether it goes too far. For my money, Rylance knows exactly how to play to an audience. His gurning and fourth wall breaks have the audience in stitches. This is very much an ensemble cast, though, with strong performances throughout. Raymond retains the structure of side plots and minor characters to add depth, with each of the actors having fun with their roles. Tartuffe is particularly pleasing in terms of classical theatre for having strong and intelligent female characters, which certainly translates here.”
The Reviews Hub
“Moliere mash-up”
Reviewer: Maryam Philpott
Parts of Tartuffe (Remixed) feel under-rehearsed, especially at the start as the company fumbles through the first few scenes, seeming unsure of the tone, but they soon pick up Raymond’s verse structure. The rhyming couplets work on the whole, although for some cast members the rhythm seems to drive them instead of the other way around. Where the play struggles most, however, is in the presentation of Pastor Blake, oddly played by Mark Rylance as a vicar from an Agatha Christie spoof with elaborate false teeth. The performance is so overt, his character’s actions so obvious, that the premise that he is a master manipulator lacks credibility. Rylance plays to the audience continually but seems to be in a different play to everyone else.
LouReviews
Reviewer: Louise Penn
Having the Tartuffe character played by a white man within a black world adds a sense of Colonialism and white saviour complex to an already complicated situation. It isn’t fully explored, but is certainly there.
But it is within the satire and farce inherited from the original Tartuffe that this production shines; it knows when to be ridiculous, when to be warm, and when to lean into this historical context for its Caribbean-British setting and themes.
The Guardian
“Mark Rylance sinks his false teeth into Molière’s trickster comedy”
Reviewer: Mark Lawson
Pastor Blake (as Tartuffe here becomes) is presumably Church of England – or pretending to be – rather than Roman Catholic, as a plot twist retained from the original requires him be offered as a husband. But it’s unclear – other than to allow Rylance to be cast – why these proud families would hire this creepy white guy to preside rather than someone from London’s Black clergy.
Time Out
“This spin on the Molière classic only really comes to life when Mark Rylance takes the stage”
Reviewer: Tim Bano
“In Raymond’s take you can see Pastor Blake as a vestige of a parochial and rapacious white England which swindles and steals from black communities. You can also just enjoy the false teeth. Whichever, the stage comes alive with Rylance on it – who wouldn’t want to watch him try to seduce a baffled woman while waddling around the stage with his trousers down? – and without him diminishes into shouty arguments about belief which are too constrained by the simple rhyme scheme to really find any power.”
The Standard
“Mark Rylance stars in cheerfully scrappy reboot”
Reviewer: Nick Curtis
“The action has been neatly shifted from aristocratic 1660s Paris to a more or less contemporary society wedding between wealthy Jamaican and Nigerian families. Rylance’s clownish British vicar – with splayed horse’s teeth and an oily three-quarter combover – is the only white character and very much part of a legacy of religious imposition and colonial exploitation.
Initially his stammering, shifty performance – one eyebrow forever jacked up in crafty speculation – is just one component in a broad comic ensemble. But his standout mastery of Raymond’s version of Moliere’s rhyming alexandrine couplets can’t help but turn it into a star turn in the second half.”
theartsdesk
“False teeth not needed in this curate's egg of a production”
Reviewer: Rachel Halliburton
“It’s also a saving grace that ultimately Rylance is too fine an actor to be restricted by his “Whoops vicar!” appearance. Throughout the evening, as he insinuates himself deeper into the family, we start to feel the chill when he uses the most apparently innocent conversations to convince different individuals to surrender either their money or their bodies for his satisfaction. As a white vicar dealing with a black congregation, he also demonstrates a fake humility about the colonial past that makes his present actions all the more loathsome. Those false teeth just aren’t necessary when the reality of what he represents really begins to bite.”
BroadwayWorld
Reviewer: Cindy Marcolina
Raymond’s adaptation is excellent in a lot of ways, but falls short in others. ULTZ’s set design is perfect in its representational capacity, and Duramaney Kamara sets the action to a cracking soundscape. However, Raymond seeks to do too much at once, trying hard to keep the genre on track. A lot of the comedy isn’t really funny and oftentime verges on misogyny. The gags come in thick and fast, overstaying their welcome instead of landing and retreating.
Production photographs by Mark Senior.
Also reviewed by: The Stage (Neil Norman, four stars, “Tartuffe (Remixed) at Marylebone Theatre: The cast radiate a bold, bright energy”), whose review sits behind a paywall.
For more of what the critics have been saying this week, our roundups for The Children at the Lyric Hammersmith and Bloodsport: After Helen of Troy at Theatre Royal Stratford East are both still gathering late notices, and there is a fuller picture of the autumn in our report on the National Theatre’s 2027 season.
Tartuffe (Remixed) runs at the Marylebone Theatre until Saturday 24 October 2026.
