A Little Life: Critics split over James Norton's 'distressing' play

Variety said Happy Valley star James Norton gives an "utterly dedicated performance" in A Little Life

James Norton's new play A Little Life has divided critics, with reviews ranging from two to five stars.

The show is a stage adaptation of Hanya Yanagihara's hugely popular and Booker-nominated novel of the same name.

However, the relentless trauma featured in the play, which includes scenes of self-harm and sexual abuse, put many critics off.

Variety praised Norton's "dedicated performance" but the Financial Times called the play "deeply unsettling".

Norton plays A Little Life's protagonist Jude - a character who self-harms after suffering unrelenting abuse as a child.

While his performance was broadly praised by critics, many were put off by just how much trauma is depicted on stage over the 3hr 40min run time.

The warmest review came from Neil Norman of the Daily Express, who awarded the show five stars and described it as "utterly compelling".

"This is industrial strength theatre for serious theatregoers," he said. "Norton's courageous performance makes Jude's torment almost Biblical in this shattering indictment of paedophilia and the physical and psychological scars that result."

L-R: James Norton as Jude, Omari Douglas as JB and Zach Wyatt as Malcolm in A Little Life

Yanagahira's novel became a word-of-mouth phenomenon after its publication 2015. It found a particular audience among young readers, with pop star Dua Lipa among the book's biggest fans.

In the story, a traumatised Jude is supported by his friends Willem, JB and Malcolm, who are played in the show by Luke Thompson, Omari Douglas and Zach Wyatt respectively.

However, the play has not gone down well with everyone. Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times awarded the show three stars, saying Norton gives "a superb performance in a deeply troubling show".

"There are major problems translating the novel to stage that Van Hove has not been able to surmount, and issues within it are amplified," she wrote.

"Without the slow evolution of the 700-page narrative, the story becomes a relentless pile-up of pain and physical suffering. The nature of the source material means that it doesn't work like a drama, drawing you in emotionally through dialogue, plot and action."

There was a similar sentiment from Variety's David Benedict, who agreed Norton is "utterly dedicated".

But, he noted, there are no breaks from the relentless trauma for the audience in the same way there would be when reading the book.

"Hanya Yanagihara's million-selling novel... runs, in the UK edition, to 814 pages - obviously impossible to read in a single sitting," he said. "That means that even the most committed reader gets respite from the litany of sequences of abuse, which so shockingly ruin Jude's entire life.

"For all the wit and care of the performances, Malcolm and JB register as one-note ciphers because the adaptation cuts them down to little more than plot functionaries."

Author Hanya Yanagihara pictured with her second novel the year it was nominated for the Booker Prize

Fiona Mountford of iNews was more impressed, awarding the show four stars.

"This is without doubt the most gruelling piece of theatre I can recall seeing," she said. "How Norton manages this performance once a day is astonishing, but to do it twice on matinée days is a feat of endurance that deserves some sort of medal for bravery.

"Jan Versweyveld's versatile set, suggesting a range of personal and professional spaces, is flanked by two screens of video projections that lead us slowly and mesmerically through eerily empty streetscapes of New York. When Jude self-harms, the screens crackle fuzzily with static. This is unrelenting - but magnificent."

The Dutch adaptation of A Little Life received mostly positive reviews when it was performed in Edinburgh with English subtitles in 2022.

The West End transfer was given four stars by the Telegraph's Dominic Cavendish, who commented: "The book has been accused of piling on the agony but it doesn't feel gratuitous here.

"Norton is superb at suggesting hidden depths, that impassivity acquired in the exploitative company of a Catholic monk who first befriended then betrayed him. Norton lays himself literally bare and enacts self-cutting harm.

"We've had male nudity in the West End before, but has it ever been in conjunction with such a mixture of blood, guts and sexual predation?"

There were other four-star reviews from the Evening Standard's Nick Curtis who described it as a "superb piece of theatre... staged with consummate skill", and the Daily Mail's Luke Jones who said it was "brutally miserable, but somehow also mercifully entertaining".

Bridgerton actor Luke Thompson plays Willem, Jude's closest friend

However, Clive Davis of the Times was far less positive, awarding the show just two stars.

"Strip away the gore and the gossip about Norton's private parts, and what do you have? A stylishly mounted, second-rate melodrama," he said.

"The performances are accomplished. Norton gives us a soul broken into fragments. The play, inevitably can only deliver a precis of a book that sprawls over some 700 pages."

The Guardian's Arifa Akbar awarded the show three stars, writing: "It is staged with utmost intelligence But for all its sophistication and searing qualities, it is a discomforting production.

"Where Yanagihara's book followed the trajectories of Jude's friends to paint a compelling picture of their love towards Jude, here we only see flashes of this camaraderie and warmth, which leaves the story less textured, more unremittingly focused on abuse and its legacy."

Norton is best known for his roles in McMafia and Happy Valley - which saw him portray Tommy Lee Royce, the nemesis of Sarah Lancashire's police sergeant Catherine Cawood.

In her two-star review, The Independent's Alice Saville struck a dissenting tone about Norton's performance.

"Somehow Norton doesn't convey Jude's inner life, or do enough to make you desperately root for him," she said.

"I could feel the people around me sobbing and covering their eyes and sometimes I did too. But I also felt manipulated by its naive and psychologically incurious narrative of abuse.

"That's partly the fault of Van Hove's cold, surgical, humourless adaptation, but it's more so the fault of Yanagihara's book itself.

The play is directed by Ivo van Hove, who won best director at the Tony Awards in 2016 for his production of A View From The Bridge

She said the play is "so painful to watch that, like Jude, you wish it would all just stop. But it's both a hugely irresponsible message, and a false one. Real-life suffering is more complex, interspersed with moments of joy, care and healing - and recovery is too precious to give up on."

As tickets have sold out for A Little Life's run at the Harold Pinter Theatre, it will move to the Savoy for a five-week extension in July.

"The play is beautifully acted but surpassingly bleak," said Matt Wolf of the New York Times. "Spectators may find their own threshold for trauma tested more than once. I know mine was.

"You emerge stunned at the sheer mercilessness of it all, but moved? By the acting, yes. But not the play."

Katherine Cowles of the New Statesman said watching the play made her feel a "sudden affinity with those poor Facebook moderators, trapped in a windowless room for hours trawling through images of the very worst of human suffering: rape, torture, child abuse, self-harm".