Billie Piper proves an unexpected smash hit with Yerma reviewers after 'devastating' performance

The former Nineties pop star has already sparked awards season buzz

Billie Piper plays Yerma in Simon Stone's revival of Federico Garcia Lorca's 1934 play (Young Vic)

Billie Piper has proved an unexpected smash hit with theatre critics for her “devastating” performance in Yerma.

The 33-year-old actress might be best known for her Nineties pop career, marrying radio DJ Chris Evans and playing Rose in Doctor Who, but she looks set for a glittering stage career after wowing reviewers in a revival of Federico Garcia Lorca’s 1934 play.

Piper is playing the lead as the childless woman struggling to come to terms with her infertility in a new production at London’s Young Vic directed by Simon Stone.

What’s On Stage’s Sarah Crompton wrote that she is “superb” at expressing her character’s agony, “moving from the laughingly flirtatious to the absolutely distraught in incremental and beautifully described steps”, while The Times’ Kate Maltby praised her for an “extraordinary theatrical triumph”.

Hugh Montgomery wrote for the i that Piper’s “towering turn” dominated the evening as she emitted a “radiant charisma that makes her self-abnegation all the more heartbreaking”, while Libby Purves wrote in the Daily Mail that Piper could be “Medea, lady Macbeth, King Lear himself…one of the most intense and exciting creatures on any stage”.

Yerma runs at the Young Vic until 24 September.