The show centres around American writer Clifford Bradshaw and his relations with English cabaret performer Sally Bowles, played by Buckley.
“Buckley nails the nuances and jarring contradictions of Sally, who wears so many impenetrable layers of bluster and bravado that in lesser hands she could be hard to get a handle on,” she wrote.
“Surely the most powerful moment – and perhaps the best musical-theatre performance I have ever seen live – is Buckley’s rendition of the title song.
Buckley and Redmayne are best known as stars of the big screen.
“Jessie Buckley sings her heart out as a fretful, doomed Sally Bowles: a powerhouse of emotion, she leaves everything on stage.
“With its starry cast and a director who has made her name rethinking classic plays, this Cabaret always promised to be the show of the season,” she opined.
“It does not matter that Redmayne’s voice is drowned out by the orchestra at times,” she wrote.
Buckley plays the character “as the opposite of Liza Minnelli’s fun-loving chanteuse”, the journalist suggested.
But he warned that Buckley’s portrayal Bowles “is going to divide opinion”.