Nicole Kidman's West End Performance

Nicole Kidman’s performance in DNA play has been described by critics as "luminous" and "compelling."

16:30 15 September 2015

Nicole Kidman has won the heart of critics who described her West End performance as “luminous” and “compelling.” The Oscar-winning star plays British scientist Rosalind Franklin, the only woman involved in the discovery of DNA’s double helix in 1953.

 

The play, entitled Photograph 51, was directed by Michael Grandage and it opened on Monday to a string of four-star reviews.

 

The Guardian described the actress first West End appearance in 17 years as “a commanding, intelligent performance.”

 

Meanwhile, Michael Billington said: “My only complaint about Anna Ziegler’s intriguing, informative 95-minute play is that it is not longer.”

 

"It is a fine performance in which Kidman reminds us that the scientific life can be informed by private passion," the review continued.

 

Dominic Cavendish, who gave the play a four-star rating, said: "Kidman displays once again the power to hold us in thrall".

"Although her kit is Fifties demure, the caboodle of her nuanced performance is the stuff of intoxication.”

 

"Kidman is even better communicating a life of the mind than she was all those years ago allowing the briefest glimpse possible of her body," wrote The Arts Desk's Matt Wolf.