★★★★ 

A serious, smouldering love story that touches on meaty questions about female empowerment, religious conviction and the treatment of disability. Richly evocative staging from director Natalie Abrahami conjures a world of chalk and flint, beauty and privation. Lydia Leonard is wonderfully contained and quietly agonised as the dutiful, emotionally errant Rachel, while Jean St Clair is terrific too as her mute, marginalised, finally defiant mother. As for Laurie Davidson as the mysterious tousled heart-throb – well, he’s barely out of drama school and utterly compelling.

Daily Telegraph

★★★★ 

The Meeting has a spare, strange beauty, and a piercing eloquence. Jones’s writing is as tangy and restless as seawater, gently eddying one moment, cresting into tsunami-force waves the next, dangerous emotional undercurrents beneath its surface. Deftly directed by Natalie Abrahami, it has a deceptive simplicity, demanding an attentive ear as much to what is unsaid as to its plain-speaking poeticism. Vicki Mortimer’s design, with its concentric circles and banks of stones, suggests the weatherworn landscape, and layers of meaning emerge from Jones’s play like sedimental strata.

Times

★★★★ 

Natalie Abrahami’s direction and Vicki Mortimer’s design give the play a strong physical life and there are good performances all round. Gerald Kyd as the unbreakable Adam, Laurie Davidson as the dangerous interloper, Olivia Darnley as a paradoxical Quaker chatterbox all impress, and it is moving to see Jean St Clair, as Rachel’s long-silenced mother, given virtually the last word.

Guardian

★★★★ 

A tender but fierce drama. Impressive.

Evening Standard

★★★★ 

Charlotte Jones deftly draws complex, believable characters and interweaves messy human emotions with big themes, exploring expression and self-restraint, acceptance, forgiveness and proper listening.

Financial Times

★★★★ 

Jean St Clair makes herself a fierce and commanding presence through gesture alone, making every shrug and piercing stare unmistakably eloquent for the characters around her who have never tried to learn her fluent sign language. Lydia Leonard is similarly superb as her daughter Rachel, suffocating in her own guilt and shame, struggling to make herself heard by her kindly but emotionally wounded husband – played with great gentleness by Gerald Kyd.

The Stage

Charlotte Jones’ fascinating, complex drama makes for compelling viewing as it slowly, quietly, powerfully draws us in. Vicki Mortimer’s ingenious set gives the stage remarkable depth while retaining a simplicity which gives director Natalie Abrahami the perfect platform. On it she orchestrates it all to near perfection.
Lydia Leonard is superb – and so is Laurie Davidson as Nathaniel, the mysterious intruder who effectively lights the touch paper.

Chichester Observer

★★★★ 

This is a play which sizzles with the sheer quality of the plot and the acting. Compelling.

West Sussex County Times