(Edited highlights of the panel's review taken from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight Review.)

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TOM PAULIN:
It moves fast. A series of small scenes. Comic strip by a Medieval allegory. It's superficial. It's over 20 years old. If you are interested in anxiety. What it's like to be in a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant male. The hang ups about gays, blacks and women. Watching it now I kept thinking about the soldiers of Iraq. The claustrophobia of being trapped in a particular consciousness and trapped in a particular history. It does not work. And Branagh who is very energetic is playing such a superficial part with no inflection and subtlety in the writing that it's tedious, but over quickly.

MARK KERMODE:
The writing is the weakest thing. It has less to say about the messed up male psyche than Neil LaBute does. I think Branagh's performance makes this great. A power-house performance. One which started in his work on Woody Allen's Celebrity. Where he plays the standing character but nastier ... is the basis of the character here.

TOM PAULIN:
He's a nerd. There's a blank space, no darkness where he does terrible things.

MARK KERMODE:
I think there's darkness. Physical darkness. There's a point where he strips himself bare and buffoons around on stage and you think you see darkness. It's worth seeing just for the strength of seeing Branagh eat the scenery.

MARK LAWSON:
I thought the buffoonery was important. Branagh makes the figure a ridiculous figure, a clown.

JULIE MYERSON:
I loved it, I thought it was upsetting and embarrassing, shocking in the right way, I was amazed it was written 20 years ago - it does not feel dated. Branagh is fantastic. An apparently mild , down trodden man, who wants to leave his wife then, he degenerates into a frightening creature. A huge credit to the production it wasn't a cold, mean wordy play. It had warmth in it. And Branagh taking his pants off and having things dangle is a vulnerable moment.

MARK LAWSON:
The production can't afford the Branagh character to be a hero, because he's saying and doing such hateful things. He makes him ridiculous. In the scene before the murders where he's prancing around a woman's place, he's ...

JULIE MYERSON:
He's frightening. You almost want to laugh. But it's frightening.

TOM PAULIN:
It was unbelievable that scene. It didn't add up. It's such a flat character he is playing. He needs to jump around and and shout a bit..

JULIE MYERSON:
He jumped around constantly.

MARK LAWSON:
He's one of the few actors that fills that stage. The writing, as Mark mentioned, Mamet is the hero of the English playwrights, three of them talking about him in the programme. It does expose him as a writer. These are not strong scripts.

MARK KERMODE:
Sexual Perversity.. is better written than this. This is one of the things you see is C-list Mamet, the writing is going through the motions. In terms of the stuff of the violence not working in the sequence, I think Branagh's character worked but not the stuff around him. There's a part in a play where a hooker who he has given $50, to, gives it back to him.

MARK LAWSON:
Does that not happen Mark?

MARK KERMODE:
Apparently not.

JULIE MYERSON:
I think they need the huge space. The set is very good. A small man in a big city. That works. It felt surreal. It didn't have to feel that realistic.