The Stage
Probably the most telling compliment that can be made about this revival of David Storey’s witty, engaging social drama is that Hollywood star Orlando Bloom, dressed down in a dowdy brown shirt, tie and cardigan, merges into the background. Lez Brotherston’s wonderful set - essentially a terrace house with walls pulled down - invites the audience into the Shaw family’s house and has them settle down on the well-worn furniture to watch what happens when a family, many families, gets together for a social function like a 40th wedding anniversary. That Bloom is just another part of that family is testament to how complete is this theatrical experience and to Anna Mackmin’s energetic yet sensitive direction Casting more than plays its part.
While Paul Hilton as the deeply damaged Andrew wears his anger and bitterness on his sleeve, as youngest brother Stephen, Bloom's is an internalised performance and all the more impressive for that
Tracy enthusiastic in show of appreciation for Orlando's stage success
Review Round-up: Does Orlando Bloom on Stage?
“ In making his stage debut as the youngest of three brothers returning home to Yorkshire for their parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary, Orlando Bloom exhibits a faultless modesty. His character Steven, a discouraged teacher, stuttering novelist and father of four, is a silent, moody introvert. He says very little and rarely commands the stage. He succumbs to a little light weeping, but does that in the safety of the darkness…"
Critics welcome Bloom stage debut
Don't be misled by the title that In Celebration is light-hearted. It is a gloomy northern coalmines affair with a pulverisingly slow, first half.
Good cast here. Tim Healy, familiar from TV's Auf Wiedersehen Pet and Coronation Street... could speak more clearly, but he embodies the dignity and toughness of the north-eastern miner.
Movie pin-up Orlando Bloom shows fine sensitivity with this part.
Daily Mail
The Guardian Unlimited
The revival of David Storey's 1969 drama exactly doubles the number of straight plays by living British dramatists in the West End. Even then, one assumes it owes its life largely to Orlando Bloom's theatrical debut.
But Storey's tough and sturdy play stands the test of time, and Bloom should guarantee it a young audience.
Three sons travel up to a Yorkshire mining town to celebrate their parents' 40th wedding anniversary, and reveal their degrees of disfigurement.
Through Steven, Storey nails the traumatised rootlessness that comes from feeling one's life has no significance. Bloom lends Steven exactly the right sense of haunted taciturnity and withdrawn moodiness.
The Times Online
Anna Mackmin’s revival of his second play, with the fashionable Orlando Bloom taking the role created by Brian Cox 40 years ago, gives a less literal answer to that question: Storey’s work isn’t just alive but has a kick capable of separating today’s audiences from their emotional teeth. Bloom is Steven Shaw, one of three sons returning from the comfy, middle-class South to celebrate his parents’ ruby wedding in the Yorkshire village where his father works as a coalminer. Superficially it’s an unrewarding part, because he spends most of the time looking wan and saying little but that he’s “fine”, but an important one.
Early morning with Orlando Bloom
Bloom may be more famed for playing to the cameras as Caribbean Pirate and Tolkien Elf.But on the Duke of York's stage he controls all the dark corners of the miner's house when the educated sons return to show what their parents really lived and hoped and sacrificed themselves for.
The Guardian critic, Michael Billington, liked it too. No mention - only other memories for me - of the notorious time when David Storey punched him for pronouncing one of his plays 'a stinker'.
[....]He also lived his own free-spirited life after graduating from college. Living in Denmark, where his father was born, Mortensen sold flowers on the street and lived an idyllic, tax-free existence before returning to the United States to become an actor. “I was selling roses on the street,” he said. “I loved interacting with people, which I’m usually not that good at. I would also get to the farmers market in Copenhagen at dawn and buy sweet peas for wholesale. Then I would sell those as well. It was a great way to live." (VM Interview Cleveland Plain Dealer - April 1, 1999 )
