If you have any amendments/additions to make to this list, then please let us know.
RELOCATED [THEATRE]
CLOUD NINE [THEATRE]
- The Guardian
- Bloomberg.com
- The Telegraph
- The Times
- The Independent
- The Stage
- Evening Standard
- London Theatre Guide
- What's on Stage
TORN [TV]
"...The fake mother was played excellently by Nicola Walker, late of Spooks, showing a nervy, damaged woman without overdoing the hysterics...."
- Andrea Mullaney, The Scotsman
EDMOND [THEATRE]
"Branagh is superb at portraying these mood swings, born out of a self-righteous disgust, nourished through self- justification. It is Edmond's quest to feel more alive that finally makes his situation spiral out of control — he kills a pimp in a torrent of racial abuse, picks up an actress waiting tables at a diner (Nicola Walker, excellent as the mentally frail lost soul), and, back at her apartment, the real crisis comes. Branagh portrays the true Edmond as the one who pants like an animal over his kills, uttering strange bestial cries, saturated in sweat and adrenaline."
- Victoria Segal, Sunday Times
"But Branagh shrewdly exploits the ridiculous: he makes absurdity an incongruous foil to violence and psychosis. Nicola Walker plays the neurotic waitress beautifully, like a film on fast-forward. And the scene contains an uncanny, almost magical, moment in which the waitress (an out-of-work actress) suddenly testifies to her love of the theatre. It is as if, for one heady moment, an escape exit has been identified, as though her remark could bring our nightmare to an end, permit us to acknowledge it as a fiction. Instead, it is the prelude to her death..."
- Kate Kellaway, The Observer
"...And, in a play that takes the form of a restless, Dante-esque kaleidoscope, there are lightning-sharp performances from Nicola Walker as a manic actress, Stephen Greif as a campy hotel clerk and burly cop and Nonso Anozie as Edmond's redemptive cellmate..."
- Michael Billington, The Guardian
"Kenneth Branagh effortlessly holds the attention throughout, playing both the comedy and maintaining the tension with equal effectiveness.
Nicola Walker, as the neurotic waitress/actress, is a completely identifiable character, conveyed with humour and tragedy. The well-played comic moments are, in fact, what keep the audience going throughout this at times gruelling piece, however, it never becomes a black comedy - the message is too dark to be laughed away. "
- Ursual Strauss, Culture Wars
"...by the time he has met Glenna the actress/waitress, he is losing touch with his own sanity as he rails against black people, his view of society becoming skewed bizarrely. Mamet recognises that the expressed racism from Edmond allows Glenna to voice her homophobia, as they reveal to each other unacceptable views, each made secure by the other's extremism. Pale eyed Nicola Walker is impressive as Glenna, the girl who becomes Edmond's victim when she refuses to declaim that she is a waitress rather than a wannabe actress..."
- Lizzie Loveridge, CurtainUp
PASSIONPLAY [THEATRE]
"There are good performances from all the cast. James Laurenson's fumbly, bumbly, embarrassed James almost salivates at the prospect of an affair with a much younger woman, getting his sexual buzz from the excitement of the deception as much from the sexual encounters. Nicola Walker's finely judged Kate, is an attractive hedonist. Cherie Lunghi, strangely cast as Eleanor, loses her bounce as the play progresses..."
- Lizzie Loveridge, CurtainUp
FREE [THEATRE]
"Each of Bowen's 12 scenes shows a one-on-one confrontation with just such an escape at stake.
The opener, with ice-cold businesswoman Nicola Walker winding up Catherine McCormack's flustered temp, is hilarious, while Walker's showdown with her dad is breathtakingly vicious. These two give the best performances of the night – McCormack's nervous alloy of impulsive ditziness is one of the most natural-seeming I can remember in quite a while."
- Jonathan Gibbs, The Independent
"...the play has an unusual slant. It's not the strained plot that gives life to its episodes but the way in which all of them are driven by degrees of irritation - ranging from crossness to wrath.
A chilling Nicola Walker instructs a cross temp in the importance of owning her anger. Her father flares up briefly at her mechanical bloodlessness..."
- Susannah Clapp, The Observer
TALES FROM VIENNA WOODS [THEATRE]
"...David Harrower's new translation - though not that different from Christopher Hampton's - has some vibrant mouthiness, while Nicola Walker's sallow but passionately burning Marianne is superb... "
- Kate Bassett, The Independent
MODERN DANCE FOR BEGINNERS [THEATRE]
"Justin Salinger has a sweet, gentle quality that softens, without traducing, the unpleasant people he impersonates. Nicola Walker counters this with yet another excellent portrait of a tough broad; this actress is so good at doing abrasive-yet-vulnerable that, as here and in her last play, Free, she makes playwrights who haven't done enough work look much better than they should."
- Rhoda Keonig, The Independent
SEXUAL PERVERSITY IN CHICAGO [THEATRE]
"Good as Alan Westaway and Charlotte Randle are as the softer-hearted couple, Dominic Rowan and Nicola Walker are even better as Bernard and a divorcee he unwisely tries to pick up. "Forgive me if I'm being too personal," she tells him, "but I do not find you sexually attractive." Looking like a man who can't believe that his cigar has just exploded, Bernard says, "Is that a new kind of line?"..."
- Rhoda Keonig, The Independent
DEAD EYE BOY [THEATRE]
"As Billy, the bear-like Brendan Coyle powerfully and poignantly captures a man who discovers the possibility of happiness and decency, only to find them buckling under the strain of the past, while Nicola Walker devastatingly nails the emotional immaturity of the addictive personality.
Her treatment of her son - veering disastrously between the heavy-handed and the inappropriately skittish - makes you wince, as does her sexual abandon with Billy when Soren is around. In a classic case of cross addiction, sex has evidently taken the place of crack in her life."
- Charles Spencer, The Telegraph
Site design and all original content ©NW.net 2006-08