Jude Law gets five stars in O’Neill’s Anna Christie

After luke-warm reviews for Keira Knightley's much-publicised switch from screen to theatre in Children's Hour, Jude Law may have been forgiven for being nervous ahead of his own return to the West End in the Donmar Warehouse's new play, Anna Christie. But following a crop of positive reviews, he needn't have worried.

Robert Ashford's production of Eugene O'Neill's 1921 play tells the tale of a former prostitute who is reunited with her mariner father and seeks redemption, and love, out at sea.

Having played Hamlet in the same theatre back in 2009 – an experience Law described as "very inner" – the 38-year-old has returned to the Donmar to play Mat, the rescued sailor who becomes involved with daughter Anna. Libby Purves writes in the Times that he first emerges "ragged, soaked, magnificently half-stripped, uttering Irish curses", and is in one scene "so frightening that I flinched".

Although the play itself is "sometimes creaky", writes the Daily Telegraph's Charles Spencer, "the sheer emotional power of the drama sweeps reservations aside".

Spencer adds that Law "discovers humour, tenderness and sudden moments of intense physical and emotional violence" in his character.

The staging is purposefully moody, featuring a nautical tilted wooden stage that is periodically shrouded in mist and reverberates to the strains of sea songs.

"What Ashford has grasped," says Michael Billington in a five-star review in the Guardian, "is that O'Neill's real protagonist is none of the human characters: it is the sea itself."

And although Billington admits that Law gives "the best performance I've seen him give", he also adds that much of the role's power is that "it releases Law from the tyranny of always being seen as the good-looking lead man".

Paul Taylor in the Independent has a slightly different opinion of Law's part, praising the 38-year-old for animating "the tension between this character's playfully self-amused exploitation of the cocky-stud stereotype and his violently bigoted sanctimony".

Law's co-star Ruth Wilson is also praised for her depiction of Anna that is "magnificent in every department" (Taylor) and "a terrific creation" (Purves). ·