Extracts from the reviews (from Playhouse Theatre run):

"...Entering the Landlord's establishment might sound like a nightmarish experience. After all. it is a domain ruled by a six foot-plus skinhead with a belt buckle spelling out the word "BEER", who rages against all that he views as not "normal" Viz, gays, the EU, the Internet, the Germans, the French, the Spanish, implementation executives called Eugene and women drinking pints. Strutting around the stage in front of a backdrop summing up his Weltanshauung - "pint for the fella, glass of white wine for the lady" - he is unable to tolerate anything that does not fit into his rigid vision... The Landlord's show could be akin to being locked in the public bar after hours with a tanked up Alf Garnett and no possibility of escape. But Murray delivers the material with such a twinkle that it is clear that he - like us - is laughing at the Landlord. He is simultaneously celebrating and sending up the character. After two and a quarter hours, the ranting does wear a bit thin - could Murray trim the show and lose the interval? He could certainly do without the "What a Wonderful World" musical encore. For all that, Murray has created something highly unusual - a pub bore who is very far from boring..." The Independent

"Al Murray, the Pub Landlord, returning for a season at the Playhouse near Charing Cross, is the voice of Little England squire, pulling a pint for the gentleman and a glass of white wine for the lady. Bald, bullish and bigoted, he makes Alf Garrnett sound like a wooly liberal. His views are those of the pub bore, confidential cab driver and patriotic soccer hooligan all rolled into one. And his discharges them in a torrent of myoptic meandering in a mauve blazer and short-sleeved shirt while cheerfully insulting members of the audience. Teaching? Since they abolished the cane, it's not attracted the right sort of people. Illness? Let's have proper plagues, not syndromes and disorders. The Chinese? With an alphabet like that, you would number your food. Like so many character comedians, though, he is less funny the longer he goes on. You have to be a comedian of genius, or Ken Dodd, to be cumulatively hilarious." The Daily Mail

"...Al Murray broke through the 90-minute (solo) barrier last year during the Edinburgh Festival. It was a long run in an intimate venue with loos, booze and cosy cushions all on hand, and at the time the celebrated Pub Landlord was unquestionably the funniest act available. Six months later, ...And A Glass Of White Wine For The Lady! has hit the West End's Playhouse, and Murray has expanded to fit it. The charisma and publicity are quite enough to fill the theatre, and Murray maintains his trademark vicious banter with the punters closest to him. But while space does not trouble him, time seems to be more of a problem. The 90-minute show has expanded to two and a half hours, including an interval. With little new material to pad out the extra time, the show ends up feeling slow and repetitive; we know that for every well-crafted punchline there must be five minutes of shouting and at least three of swearing. As the Pub Landlord has got bigger, he also seems to have lost focus, often becoming the stooge for a decent joke rather than a character that merits exploration. Particularly for this character, simplification is a dangerous tendency, since the less hypocritical he appears to be, the more his bigotry sounds like a logical option. "I'm not comparing myself to Jesus, I'm simply saying there are some glaring similarities," he muses." The Times

"If you actually fetched up in a quiet East End pub and were confronted by Al Murray's terrifying landlord, you'd get your pint down double-quick and make straight for the door. In a theatre, however, he offers moments of comic joy. Murray won the Perrier Award at Edinburgh last year after several near-misses and, for once, the judges got it right. Murray is an original, and his character of the Little Englander publican with the shaved head and the barking-mad opinions completely dominates the stage and creates a fascinatingly ambiguous response in his audience. Despite virtually no television exposure, Murray has built up a terrific word-of-mouth reputation and is playing the West End for seven weeks before moving on to make the inevitable sitcom. Catch him now. In its energy and foul-mouthed menace, the performance recalls Alexei Sayle in his heyday, while Murray's treatment of the mug punters in the front row has all the sadistic expertise of Dame Edna Everage. The pub landlord, who spends the evening swigging back the lager and treating us to his philosophy of life, is a man who believes that Britain is still great, that "ladies" should stick to white wine and that anyone who lives on the Continent is to be distrusted... I have two main reservations about Murray's act. The first is that at more than two hours it's too long and the show would be far sharper if cut down to 90 minutes and played without an interval. The second is a failure of nerve. The Pub Landlord may hate Europeans (though there is a dearth of strong material on the iniquities of the EC and the single currency), but in real life such a revolting man would hate Asians and blacks even more. Murray's character looks like a prototypical member of the BNP, but unlike Alf Garnett, to whom he's clearly closely related, his prejudices are all safe targets, and the show never strays really dangerously into the realms of the politically incorrect. It would be fascinating to see Murray genuinely antagonising his hip young audiences rather than merely playing with them. Good though he is, he's no Lenny Bruce..." The Daily Telegraph