Royal Court
aleks.sierz
What is the Royal Court theatre for? Is it a space that stages innovative new writing, or does it prefer to do documentary theatre? Is it concerned with reaching out beyond its regular audiences, or is it more focused on its own internal problems? In November 2021, it made an appalling blunder by allowing an antisemitic stereotype – a money-grubbing billionaire called Hershel Fink in Al Smith’s Rare Earth Mettle – to get through the rehearsal process despite protests from several members of the company. Eventually the character was renamed, and you’d think that the venue would Read more ...
aleks.sierz
What is the shelf life of a theatre gimmick? In April, the Royal Court announced that they were going to stage a debut play by an unknown writer, Dave Davidson, who has worked for decades in the security industry. His drama was hyped up, helped by Time Out magazine, and by fellow playwrights Simon Stephens and Dennis Kelly.Hooray! – this new writing venue had discovered an unknown talent. Not. In fact, if you buy a ticket you will not see That Is Not Who I Am by Davidson (who doesn’t exist), but instead you will experience Rapture by Lucy Kirkwood, who is an established playwright. It’s a Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
The title is so long that the Royal Court’s neon red lettering only renders the first three words, followed by a telling ellipsis. But lyrical new play For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy lives up to its weighty name.Writer-director Ryan Calais Cameron shows us Black masculinity in all its nuances and contradictions, presented by six actors so naturally charming it’s impossible not to fall in love with them. This is an odyssey through Black masculinity, a complex navigation of a sea of troubles and expectations and joy and love. Line by line, each man’s soul Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Mike Bartlett’s Cock invites suggestive comments, but the main thing about the play is that it has proved to be a magnet for star casting. Its original production at the Royal Court in 2009 starred Ben Whishaw, Andrew Scott and Katherine Parkinson. Now, this West End revival is performed by Jonathan Bailey, Taron Egerton and Phil Daniels. Reports that Rocketman star Egerton fainted during the first preview have raised public interest in a play whose explicit title, with or without an asterisk, seems particularly provocative in a commercial theatre setting. So what’s it all about?John, Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Irish teenager Saoirse Murphy has a dirty mouth. And she’s not afraid to use it when talking to the nuns at her convent school. But it soon emerges that her feistiness is a cover for some very disturbing problems in Sarah Hanly’s energetic debut monologue, Purple Snowflakes and Titty Wanks, which was first performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin last year and now visits London’s Royal Court for a short run. And although much of the material is familiar, it’s thrillingly performed by the playwright herself.Beginning with Saoirse explaining her discovery of the joys of masturbation to her best Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Bizarre. Breathtaking. Beautiful. I leave the Royal Court theatre with these Bs, as well as others such as bewitching and beguiling, buzzing in my mind. Alistair McDowall, whose previous plays include Pomona (2014) and X (2016), has created a mind-bending and time-hopping epic story which mixes Victorian gothic spiritualism with sci-fi wonderment, and is both dazzling in its imagination and dizzying in its theatricality. Without a doubt, this is the best piece of new writing on the London stage today.It’s 1863. In the stygian gloom of a windowless asylum cell, a nameless young Woman is Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Why are we indifferent to anti-Semitism? In the past few weeks the Royal Court, a proud citadel of wokeness, has been embroiled in an appalling case of prejudice by allowing a character, who is a really bad billionaire, in Al Smith’s new play, Rare Earth Mettle, to be called Hershel Fink. Stereotype, or what?The really stupid thing about this row is not just that Smith created this nominal caricature of a money-obsessed Jew, but also that no one, repeat no one, in this theatre’s script reading process seems to have noticed. Proof, if that was needed, that, as comedian and writer David Baddiel Read more ...
Gary Naylor
Few sights speak so eloquently of loss, of an especially cruel and painful loss, as one glass of wine, half-full, alone on a table. A man speaks to a partner who isn’t there, wishes her back, but knows that she has gone. Then another woman materialises to speak of of the futures he could have enjoyed - but now will not - and of the many, many futures that hunger for life, shut out of our world by deliberate action and unintentional chance. They crowd him, but only a child, bouncing with optimism, emerges fully to insist that he, this potential human being, will happen.Into her 80s but as Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Jasmine Lee-Jones has a hard act to follow – namely, herself. Her award-winning 2019 debut play, seven methods of killing kylie jenner, announced the arrival at the Royal Court of a blistering writing talent whose two sparring women made the room crackle and pop. Still only 22, she has for her second stage piece opted for something rather different, as if to show she has more than just a sharp ear for great dialogue.Curious, which its author performs solo at the Soho Theatre, begins with a striking image: in a full skirted ballgown, she runs on the spot under strobe lighting, so Read more ...
aleks.sierz
God is a tricky one. Or should that be One? And definitely not a He. So when she says take revenge, then vengeance is definitely not only hers, but ours too. American playwright Aleshea Harris’s dazzlingly satirical 2018 extravaganza is about two women seeking justice and getting even, and it comes to the Royal Court from New York, trailing shouts of enthusiasm and the Obie Award for Playwriting. Unlike many plays about African-Americans this one is refreshingly free from cliché, and this new production does it complete justice.The set up is gloriously surreal. Two 21-year-old twins, Racine Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
A cosmologist and a beekeeper walk into a barbecue. Or a wedding. The beekeeper is in a relationship, or married, or just out of a relationship, or married again. The cosmologist shares the secret of the universe with him: it’s impossible to lick the tip of your own elbow, because if you did, you would gain immortality. Somehow, the line works – sometimes.Constellations is a play told in fractures. Scenes crack apart and remake themselves constantly, a series of possible versions of the romance of Marianne (quantum theory enthusiast) and Roland (bee enthusiast). Written by Nick Payne, it was Read more ...
Laura de Lisle
“The crocus of hope is, er, poking through the frost.” When he uttered that dodgy metaphor back in February, Boris Johnson probably didn’t predict that it would become the opening number of the third edition of Living Newspaper, the Royal Court’s anarchic, hyper-current series of new writing. Then again, there’s little BoJo does that the Living Newspaper writers can’t tear to pieces accompanied by a jazzy saxophone riff. There’s a new group of writers this time, providing short scenes stitched together into one big "newspaper", all set in different spaces within the Royal Court building Read more ...