"there is no production currently running in the capital that is more intelligent, atmospheric and haunting than this"

Sunday Telegraph

"It’s so atmospheric you can almost picture for yourself the years of lane-ploughing that have gone on here ... it casts a shiver-inducing spell. "

Dominic Cavendish The Telegraph

"In Cressida Brown and Steve Waters's lovely-looking piece of theatre, a chorus of long-bodied swimmers surface dreamily from the long-dry Victorian swimming baths beneath the Bridewell's stage ... a highly visual staging ... 'Amphibians' is a lovely and elusive piece of fringe theatre"

Caroline McGinn Time Out

"Add in Georgia Lowe’s gorgeous design, split over three tiers and lit beautifully by Richard Williamson, and you have an intoxicating blend of total theatre. Visual spectacle, simply constructed but full of layers, and a complex consideration of a fascinating subject make Amphibians a fringe delight. "

Matt Trueman Culture Wars

"These are the questions raised by Amphibians, which unearths a Victorian swimming pool beneath the Bridewell to terrific effect, creating a show about winners and losers that, at its considerable best, does for swimming what Beautiful Burnout does for boxing ... this is an atmospheric and hugely promising work"

Lyn Gardner The Guardian

"As a technical piece of theatre, Amphibians is impeccable. Crisp lighting and sound design (Richard Williamson & Gregory Clarke) are effective and pertinent"

Framescourer Framescourer

"Richard Williamson’s intricate use of lighting adds ambience to this production and brings out the best of Anne Bliss Scully’s bucolic set in which the sparse interior setting contrasts effectively with the surrounding trees and foliage underfoot. The unreserved seating and circular stage contribute to an intimate feeling, drawing us into the centre of action."

Racheal Philips The Londonist

"In this revival, director Amelia Nicholson has the audience among tree trunks in the forest peering into the doctor and his wife’s country home. As they are watched from the bushes by us, the voyeurs, their isolation is acute ... This threat of the unknown other, coming from the sleeping woman upstairs, to the dark woodland outside, is relentless."

Daisy Bowie-Sell The Telegraph

"The heightened naturalism of the dialogue, laced with repetition and misunderstandings is relentless, but creates a strikingly claustrophobic atmosphere, accentuated by Anna Bliss Scully’s tree lined set, which places us at the heart of the couple’s isolated abode."

Sally Stott The Stage

"Nicholson’s production is intense and atmospheric, with a circular stage surrounded by trees and the scent of the forest in Anna Bliss Scully’s lovely design."

Aleks Sierz The Arts Desk

"Anna Bliss Scully’s design is excellent, a sparsely furnished set, with it and the audience surrounded by trees which are eerily lit by Richard Williamson, it really does enhance the ambience of discomfort and general creepiness which is just right."

There Ought to be Clowns

"There is nothing out there', states Richard (Simon Thorp) at one point in Martin Crimp's eerily elliptical 2000 play'. Amelia Nicholson's revival takes that statement literally: beyond designer Anna Bliss Scully's claustrophobic ring of trees there is only inky darkness; inside is a wan pool of light."

Andrzej Lukowski Time Out

"Anna Bliss Scully's design and Richard Williamson's lighting neatly encapsulate the situation of both audience and characters. The set is a multi-layered floor surface, the edges of each layer broken away to show another one beneath, around the seating is a path littered with fallen leaves and between scenes when they become illuminated a ring of trees encircles the theatre space: clearly there are layers to peel away and beware - 'you can't see the wood for the trees.' The text describes the doctor's home as large and comfortable but the only furniture is a severe bench, a hard wooden upright chair and two small angular wooden tables, all as uncomfortable as the couple's relationship. "

Howard Loxton British Theatre Guide

"Compounding the effectuality of the milieu is the lighting: understated shifts rendering the time of day in each scene beautifully."

Jennifer Nearly Remote Goat 2009-01-13

".. a chilling juxtaposition of sounds an images .. ..This is powerful, political theatre."

Rod Dungate ReviewsGate.com 2007-02-14

"ten out of ten for atmosphere"

Caroline McGinn Time Out 2006-11-13

"Strong lighting design and staging...visually interesting"

Three Weeks 2006-08-26

"Director Blanche McIntyre paces the action so it resembles a feverish nightmare, the gothic mood augmented by Richard Williamson's stark lighting design .... if you like your theatre physical, raw and challenging then this is for you "

Paul Fitzpatrick 2005-09-12

"But Gaude's hitting on a wider connection, the impulses to order and disorder, and the mix of creative and destructive in them. With Porter's performance catching the intelligent ordering of experience vocally and Onysos' violent potential in movement, Charlotte Damigos' set creating an underworld with the sense of dark tunnels around, aided by Richard Williamson's localised lighting, the production by Severine Ruset is alert to the script's mix of immediacy and recall from distant times."

Timothy Ramsden Reviewsgate 2005-09-18

"This is marvellous theatre: muscular, supple, unsparingly modern and alive with myth."

Jonathan Gibbs Time Out 2005-09-21

"Hunched on Charlotte Damigo's ambiant set, a murky underworld of grime and decay.."

Sam Marlowe The Times 2005-09-16

"Atmospheric lighting and sound design further enhance this sense of mystical time travel"

Robert Shore Metro 2005-09-22

"..a seasonal escape with stylish lighting by Richard Williamson..."

Ham and High 2004-12-14

"..in a derelict shed-like building where the rain pours down through a wiry screen and puddles spread across the floor. It is undeniably effective and very atmospheric..."

Lyn Gardner The Guardian

"Staged with hypnotic force… an intelligent adaptation, reminiscent of those East European versions during the Cold War"

The Independent

"This show has three striking features.. Al-Bassam’s astonishing text, which rarely echoes Shakespeare’s words, but takes the story of Hamlet and reworks it in a rich new poetic version… the show uses video and projected images in a seriously effective and disturbing way… its story of Hamlet’s progression from dumb Oedipal rage to cold-eyed religious fundamentalism is chilling and utterly credible."

The Scotsman

"Lisa Lillywhite’s simple, effective set makes imaginative use of slide projections to cast the subway scene and is aided by Peter Russel’s and Richard Williamson’s subtle and precise sound and lighting designs, which together evoke the heat, claustrophobia and urban shocks of the tube and complement the action and dialogue which crackles with poetry and politics in equal measure. The drama is in the text, true, but this production really draws it out - and it packs a powerful punch. "

Mark Espiner Time Out 2001-10-11

"This show has three striking features.. Al-Bassam’s astonishing text, which rarely echoes Shakespeare’s words, but takes the story of Hamlet and reworks it in a rich new poetic version… the show uses video and projected images in a seriously effective and disturbing way… its story of Hamlet’s progression from dumb Oedipal rage to cold-eyed religious fundamentalism is chilling and utterly credible."

Joyce McMillan The Scotsman

"I doubt whether this year’s Festival will produce another show so directly relevant to the nightmare that is brewing in the Middle East, or so vivid and eloquent in the theatrical means it uses to confront it"

Joyce McMillan The Scotsman

"Their scenes provide potent interludes to an evening haunted by an atmosphere of paranoid hysteria, which taps into 21st century fears as effectively as it catered to the superstitious whims of James I. Directors Jack Shepherd and Mehmet Ergen have converted the Arcola into a carefully nuanced chamber of horrors, where the cavernous design, dramatically varied lighting and rumbling soundtrack all provide a fertile backdrop for the nightmares - real and imagined - that erupt from Macbeth's "heat-oppressed brain"."

Rachel Halliburton Evening Standard 1999-11-30

"The plays unforgiving marriage of the fantastical and the political is beautifully executed, thanks largely to Richard Williamson's lighting and Jim Bywater's nerve-jangling sound design. But the real witching-hour of this production arrives when Macbeth and his lady begin to see in one another the mirror of their own misfortunes, as Shepherd and Boxer fully exploit the forceful intimacy of the Fringe. "

Lucy Powell Time Out 2002-05-18

"Odd stuff - but Derek Goldby's astute production gets the tone absolutely right, anchoring the fantastical elements of de Wet's script (translated from Afrikaans by Steven Stead) in a vividly oppressive atmosphere. Kim Beresford's set - all wood and corrugated iron - and Richard Williamson's dim lighting draw us into this world of casual horror and dark jokes."

Time Out 2004-04-17

"This work, remarkable in its simplicity, is of TRULY international standard. "

M. Kouka ( Director of National Theatre of Tunis) Le Temps Daily, TUNIS

"This truly is the Fringe at its very best, and the production deserves an even longer run than is currently scheduled."

Fiona Mountford Time Out

"Every aspect of this production has an audacious and innovative zing about it. "

'Al-Anba' Newspaper, KUWAIT

"...while Richard Williamson’s stark, direct lighting utilises, to full effect O’Shea’s subtle, elastic facial expressions."

Ilyse Kusnetz The Scotsman 2000-08-10