[6] In 2008, Mark Ravenhill wrote in The Guardian, "Written for the leftwing company Joint Stock, the play charts the disintegration of radical political possibilities during the English civil war, skilfully balancing individual and communal experiences.
Directed by Rachel Chavkin, the cast featured Vinie Burrows, Rob Campbell, Matthew Jeffers, Mikéah Ernest Jennings, Gregg Mozgala and Evelyn Spahr.
The critic wrote that the scene depicting the Putney Debates is "exhausting, but the stakes are huge, a reminder that big change so often comes through painstaking deliberation, not shock and awe.
Describing the anticlimax as "true of history but taxing as dramaturgy", Green wrote that the audience simply sees "an endless cycle of betrayal and hardship."
Green also said that the play's bleak vision is sometimes beautifully crystallized when coming from characters' interactions, but that the historical arguments often "aren't dramatized so much as transcribed".
The play's 21 scenes, according to the critic, do not form a narrative but "provide a patchwork of characters and encounters [...] Chavkin and her actors have to struggle to get each new vignette started, like they’re hefting a great weight each time, then dropping it, then bending over to pick it up again."
Holdren praised the mirror scene between Burrows and Spahr for strongly conveying the "physical concreteness of the revolutionary urge: the marvel of seeing oneself as whole and human for the first time.