Reviews

The Lunch Club is a bright and entertaining portrayal of the complexities of daily interaction. The ingredients of humour, drama and suspense combine to make an intriguing dish that definitely hits the spot.

Catherine Usher - Ealing & Acton Gazette
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Erik Haggstrom's amiable comedy eavesdrops on some construction workers during a few weeks of lunch breaks, enjoying their unforced mixture of gossip, teasing, flirting and sincere concern for each other's problems.

Drama intrudes when one is beaten up off site and the others' solicitude is misinterpreted, but good spirits and good fellowship win out in the end.Stage

The play is strongest in its lightest moments, and it is a tribute to Justin Allen's direction that the actors all inhabit their characters with an easy naturalness - Kim Delury as a blokeish but sensitive Aussie, Agron Biba as the senior member who hands out wise counsel and boring stories in equal measure, Chloe Summerskill as the apprentice who can be one of the guys without losing her femininity, Waleed Akhtar as the victim of the beating who must find his way back to friendship.

Writing, direction and acting all grow noticeably more tentative as things get more serious and the author attempts, perhaps too earnestly, to impose a moral and political statement on the comedy.

There are indications that this is a work still in progress and a more successful integration of its disparate tones should result in a thoroughly satisfying work.

Gerald Berkowitz - The Stage Online