"In 1746, Carlo Goldoni wrote a classic comedy normally translated as The Servant of Two Masters. Richard Bean has used it for a riotous farce combining the original's structure with a particularly Anglo-Saxon verbal and physical humour. The result, a kind of Carry On Carlo, is one of the funniest productions in the National's history." --Michael Billington, Guardian " One Man . is . both satanic and seraphic, dirty-minded and utterly innocent. Letting loose and neutralizing all sorts of demons, it's ideal escapism for anxious times . [It weaves] elements of music hall slapstick, "Carry On"-movie-style bawdiness and Monty Python-esque absurdity into a remarkably fine mesh .
The language is fueled by a logic that is as irrefutable as it is silly. The script takes time to consider the semantic and class distinctions between someone who smells "like a horse" and "of horses." It gleefully skewers the tortured metaphors of lovers' flights of fancy and traffics unapologetically in the childish, tongue-twisting pleasures of alliteration . Occasionally One Man. peers naïvely into the future to imagine a time-to-be when a female prime minister ends the British class struggle and portable phones make life less complicated. And without losing its galloping stride, the play dares to comment disarmingly on its own artificial nature." --Ben Brantley, New York Times.