Ten years after the Royal Court first staged it, The Children has returned to London at the Lyric Hammersmith, with Meera Syal, Kerry Fox and Declan Conlon as three retired nuclear physicists living just outside an exclusion zone of their own making. Rachel O’Riordan directs Lucy Kirkwood’s ninety-minute three-hander, and the notices agree almost completely on the playing — Syal’s deadpan, unsettled Hazel and Fox’s nervy Rose draw admiring write-ups almost everywhere, theartsdesk alone wanting more of Hazel’s inner life — and hardly at all on the play. Time Out finds its climate argument sharper than it was in 2016; BroadwayWorld finds the same argument quaint; The Telegraph is unconvinced the trio read as scientists at all. What nobody disputes is Gary McCann’s set, a wooden cottage framed inside the curve of a reactor tunnel.
The verdict: eighteen reviews so far — one five-star notice, one at four and a half, nine at four, six at three, and one outlet that publishes no rating. Across the seventeen that do score, the average is 3.7 out of 5. Almost all of them praise the acting and Gary McCann’s design; where they part company is on the play itself, and on whether a nuclear parable written in 2016 still lands ten years on.
What are critics saying about THE CHILDREN?
West End Best Friend
Reviewer: Chris Abbott
“Completing this trio of accomplished actors is the peerless Meera Syal as Hazel, shoeless and unsettled, attempting to focus on home life but always unsettled by the outside world she tries to shun. At first amusing, and adept as always at the well-delivered one-liner, she gradually reveals the bitter emptiness of a life without purpose and a family lost. Her eventual decision is heart-breaking, her face crumpling, but is also essentially true to the character, who Syal makes totally believable.”
Plays To See
Reviewer: Lennon Hu
Meera Syal as Hazel really takes the reins of the show whenever she enters the living room. Her oscillation between comedy and tragedy never lets me move from the edge of my seat. Hazel is a complicated character who wishes to remain in control after the world has blown up. Towards the end of the show, Hazel is presented with an ultimate choice by Rose that is truly a matter of life and death. It is riveting to watch Syal handle the pressure of that choice, panic gripping her as she still desperately fights for the life she has constructed.
The Guardian
“Meera Syal and co go nuclear in poignant drama”
Reviewer: Miriam Gillinson
The three characters are fascinating, complex and intriguingly volatile. Syal’s Hazel starts off as warm and funny: a determinedly healthy retiree wedded to yoghurt and yoga. But Syal’s performance has depth and bite and her character gradually emerges as a deeply perceptive woman with a steely centre. Conlon’s Robin has a boyish energy about him, which initially feels lighthearted but gradually turns terribly sad. Fox’s Rose is strong and resourceful, yet still capable of trembling with desires unspent. The emotions of all three – and the temperature of the scenes – turn in a flash. Sexy one second. Dangerous the next. Loving and tender. Seething with resentment and regret.
WhatsOnStage
Reviewer: Hang Yuen
At its heart, The Children is a warning about environmental consequences, responsibility and what we leave behind. The repeated idea of “leave the place cleaner than you find it” becomes a deceptively simple but powerful statement of the play’s wider message.
The production succeeds because it never lectures its audience. Instead, it entertains, unsettles and gradually invites reflection. What I expected to be a nice, sweet Friday-night post-work watch turned out to be funny, thought-provoking, unsettling and ultimately deeply moving. Highly recommended.
The Standard
“Meera Syal excellent in post-apocalyptic drama”
Reviewer: Nick Curtis
“Syal’s character is the heart of the play and she’s great in it, constantly in nervy motion, worrying at the moral and existential questions the other two mostly skim over. Conlon is forceful and sonorous as Robin and Fox makes the best of the least well-fleshed part. O’Riordan’s economical, fluid production makes the play feel alive and timely, if perhaps not quite a modern classic.”
LondonTheatre.co.uk
“Lucy Kirkwood’s post-apocalyptic drama feels sharper than ever”
Reviewer: Anya Ryan
“As a trio, Syal, Conlon and Fox have the easy, knowing chemistry of people who have spent years in each other's company. Syal and Conlon slip from insulting each other to moments of real tenderness and need without a second thought, while Fox captures Rose’s lingering lust for Robin – particularly when he lights up a cigarette. When crunch time comes, and Hazel has a decision to make, Syal curls in on herself, almost childlike, and tells stories about how she still longs for her mum. No matter how old we get, we’re still made up of our younger versions – never quite ready to say goodbye to the people we once were.”
The Reviews Hub
Reviewer: John Cutler
“Syal is a fine comic actor, and gets Hazel’s defensive, self-righteous determination to enjoy her retirement, come what may, spot on. Fox’s louche nomadic Rose, the diametrical opposite to the matriarch Hazel and still with an eye for Robin, is tremendous, too. Declan Conlon brings cheery Irish roguishness to Robin, though one wonders whether a retired nuclear scientist would really be milking cows and touching up female farm hands with such obvious abandon.”
LondonTheatre1
“This intriguing and thoughtful production is highly relevant in the turbulent and uncertain world in which we live.”
Reviewer: Chris Omaweng
“A slow burner over ninety minutes, the world inhabited by the three characters is largely recognisable, which isn’t always the way with dystopian plays, some of which can be so other-worldly they are effectively more science-fiction than anything else. Here, there is regular contact with Lauren, the couple’s grown-up daughter (there are three others), and Robin and Hazel are doing their best to maintain some semblance of normality despite the challenges of the exclusion zone.”
The Spy in the Stalls
Reviewer: Hannah Bothelton
Under Rachel O’Riordan’s assured direction, the humanity hits home. Bristling tension dares you to pick at the web of old wounds. The characters and their relationships feel fully developed, and the pacing is brisk and engaging – though it does slacken a tad towards the close. The movement is subtle yet purposeful, strategically mirroring shifting alliances. Overall, it’s a strong, powerfully crafted revival worthy of its tenth anniversary.
Read Hannah Bothelton’s full review at The Spy in the Stalls
Theatre and Tonic
Reviewer: Ziwen
At first glance, their conversations seem to concern nothing more than trivial everyday matters. But listen closely, and beneath the surface, one can almost see the fractured world outside the house, as well as glimpses of their painful yet beautiful past. Kirkwood’s language is bold and vivid. In her hands, even the most mundane things become interesting. And often, words are not necessary at all. The characters’ actions reveal the relationships between them with complete clarity. The play contains moments when all three are together on stage, but there is also plenty of time when two characters are left alone in the same room. In these moments, the expressions and actions they reveal, which remain unseen when all three are together, make one want to savour every detail.
Plays International & Europe
Reviewer: David Wootton
“These three are not just old friends but former colleagues, who worked together at the power station as engineers. As such, they are not just victims of the disaster, but are implicated by it. Rose’s return makes them all confront this fact, and so review their past and decide on their future. Though Kirkwood wrote The Children in response to a particular event – the major accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011 – her play continues to strike home in critical times and ask us all to reconsider our obligations and our actions.”
Read David Wootton’s full review in Plays International & Europe
Time Out
“Lucy Kirkwood’s ominous drama about a decaying British future has only grown in relevance with this tenth anniversary revival”
Reviewer: Tom Wicker
“Syal’s Hazel, dressed in muted, earthy tones, is prickly and defensive, wielding a tight smile, yoga and healthy living as her defence against Rose’s incursion. Fox is nervy, frustration fuelling her too-loud laughter and as out of place in the couple’s tautly beige domesticity as her blue jacket. As Robin, Conlon rolls in with a forced jollity that deflates like a punctured balloon. O’Riordan often has them speaking over each other, nicely heightening the sense of conversation as evasion.”
theartsdesk
“An instant classic given a jaunty revival”
Reviewer: Helen Hawkins
“O’Riordan keeps the dialogue and pacing snappy, almost overly so as the action proceeds, so that the denouement seems to arrive abruptly, and with less impact than I remember. The play, though, is still a major achievement: a modern morality tale with roots back in an older era of drama where characters made life-changing decisions and squarely faced the consequences of their actions. It’s an Ibsen play where the past's toxic legacy isn't allowed to win.”
BroadwayWorld
Reviewer: Clementine Scott
“There is still a rich seam of tragicomic humour here, and the two lead actresses tap into it to great effect: Syal as a deadpan woman on the verge, passive-aggressively winding up her electricity generator, Fox as a social misfit who’s not quite aware her jokes aren’t landing. The character of Hazel’s husband, another scientist who’s also had a romantic entanglement with Rose, is less convincing, but Declan Conlon imbues the character with a sense of hardwon personal philosophies and repressed sexual tension.”
All That Dazzles
“A thought-provoking and inventively staged exploration of generational responsibility, but one that has too many unanswered questions.”
Reviewer: Ruth Sealey
“Rachel O’Riordan’s direction uses the cottage setting well, creating a convincing sense of a lived-in space through the physicality of the cast as they busy themselves with everyday tasks. The normality is effective in showing how life has settled into a strange routine following the disaster, however the pace of the play varies very little, and even as tension builds to what should be a climax involving life-changing decisions, it never quite reaches the level of intensity I was hoping for. There are flashes of potential as they start to argue, but the anger I expect Hazel to feel in this situation ends with one slap and a hair-pull, which fizzles out as quickly as it begins.”
Theatre Weekly
“The power these actors hold when discussing the play’s nuclear themes is staggering.”
Reviewer: Finlay Clench
“Examining a community outside the exclusion zone of a nuclear power station emergency, writer Lucy Kirkwood places a family setting within this sphere of high tension. Meera Syal, as Hazel, is the stubborn matriarch, as she comes to loggerheads with the silently flawed and obviously ill Robin (Declan Conlon). And then there is the odd one out, Rose (Kerry Fox), who becomes adamant that there is a need for action to resolve the mistakes committed by this volatile trio. They are three engineers from the old plant, but also three who form a sort of family. Drama and high relationship stakes combine with nuclear struggle and risk to form an unmatched power.”
Production photographs by Helen Maybanks.
Also reviewed by: The Stage (Dave Fargnoli, three stars, “Urgent and unsettling”) and The Telegraph (Fiona Mountford, three stars, “A nuclear meltdown, a moral dilemma – so why is it so hard to care?”), whose reviews sit behind paywalls.
For more of what the critics have been saying this week, our recent roundups cover Kimberly Akimbo at Hampstead Theatre and Jane Eyre at Southwark Playhouse Elephant.
The Children runs at the Lyric Hammersmith until Saturday 3 October 2026. The production runs for one hour and thirty minutes without an interval.
