Royal Court
aleks.sierz
There is so much public anxiety about paedophiles on the internet that it’s surprising that so few plays tackle the issue. Now Los Angeles playwright Jennifer Haley brings her new play on the subject, which won the 2012 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, to London after winning awards in the States. She takes a sci-fi approach: in the near future the internet has evolved into the Nether, a virtual zone in which all the senses can be stimulated — and this is a potential paradise for paedophiles.Here is the set up: Sims is a successful businessman who has developed the Hideaway (a future version of Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Theatre-maker Tim Crouch has a thing about art. One of his plays, ENGLAND, was performed in art galleries across the world; another was called An Oak Tree, after the 1973 conceptual art piece by Michael Craig-Martin. In fact, Crouch even looks like an arty type. Now, in his latest production, he tells a story about two fictional artists: Janet Adler and her lover Margaret Gibb. But, really, his main theme, as ever, is the relationship between art and reality.The audience arrives to see a bare set, on which two young kids are playing, with the bare-brick back wall of the theatre visible. There Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Some days, I feel very sorry for playwrights, especially those that become notorious through no fault of their own. If their most famous play causes enough controversy, it can take decades before people forget it. So now, 10 years since Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s early play, Behtzi (Dishonour) caused violent protests at the Birmingham Rep because of its depiction of a rape in a Sikh temple, I can’t think of any other way of starting this review of her latest without mentioning it.Khandan (which means family) is a co-production between the Royal Court and Birmingham Rep (where the play premiered Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
It’s been a decade since the television drama Sex Traffic brought writer Abi Morgan into the mainstream. It won an impressive collection of awards, and its tale of international prostitution networks, and their brutality, was as harsh and under-the-skin as they come.In the time since, Morgan has established herself as one of the go-to British writers of her generation, with film work including The Iron Lady (Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher, pictured among enemies, below right) and Shame, television drama (for, and about, the BBC, The Hour), and plenty of theatre work. We haven’t heard, Read more ...
aleks.sierz
If rock is magic, then what about its creators? Are they wonderful magicians, or empty charlatans? Infused by the spirit of the Patti Smith song of the same name, playwright Simon Stephens’s new play puts a rock star centre stage — and then lets him implode. Given that he is played by Andrew Scott, one of the most charismatic actors of the British stage, the result is often compelling. Add to the mix some beautifully sculpted visual effects, care of Carrie Cracknell, who directed the award-winning A Doll’s House, and the result is certainly memorable.But is it as good as it could be? At first Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
Flying masonry put the Apollo in the headlines late last year when part of the theatre’s ceiling collapsed; now an airborne vampire and an impressive refurbishment give it new life. A cyclorama of dark tree branches and cloud-scudded skies covers the ongoing repair work overhead. And onstage, amid Christine Jones’s eerily gorgeous design of woodland shrouded in glittering, feathery, blue-white snow, the company of John Tiffany’s stunning production cast their heartbreaking spell.The first West End transfer for the National Theatre of Scotland, and for the Royal Court under the artistic Read more ...
aleks.sierz
What exactly is unconventional about an unconventional couple? In Abi Morgan’s new two-hander, an adaptation of last year’s book of the same name by She and He (a West Coast American couple now aged 90ish), the situation is simple. Boy meets girl at college, they lose touch, then meet again 20 years later, when both are married with kids. When they start an affair things go wobbly, but then she asks him to sign an agreement: in return for a house and income, she will provide him with “mistress services”.The best thing about this show is its titleOkay, it’s not your usual prenuptual agreement Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The transfer this week to the West End of The Weir has reminded theatre-goers of Conor McPherson’s hypnotic powers as a dramatist. In the Donmar's revival of the play you can palpably feel the playwright’s storytelling magic casting its spell all over again as, on a windy evening in a rural Irish pub, character after character unburdens himself - and finally herself - of a supernatural tale.In a way, The Weir - written when he was only 26 - is itself a ghost haunting the playwright’s entire career. It was first performed by the Royal Court in 1997, and was soon being staged all over the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
You don't have to know the difference between Dennis Wise (who is referenced during it) and Ernie Wise (who is not) to be immensely gripped by The Pass, the scorching new Royal Court play that traffics ostensibly in the world of football only to widen out into as corrosive a study in psychic implosion and self-destruction as the London theatre has seen in an age. Factor in a star performance from onetime History Boys student Russell Tovey that this actor's career to this point has in no way suggested, and one finds an early candidate for both the most surprising production of the year and Read more ...
Caroline Crampton
In many ways, the darkness is the most memorable aspect of this production. It's so deep and all-encompassing that your eyes start to play tricks on you, seeing spots of light and shadow where there is only blackness. Because of this, when Lisa Dwan's mouth is slowly illuminated eight feet up on the stage, it's easy to dismiss it at first as just another trick of the dark. The only light in the theatre seems to emanate from the mouth itself, as it begins to gasp before tumbling into the breakneck stream of consciousness monologue that is Beckett's Not I.First performed at the Royal Court by Read more ...
Matt Wolf
For increasing numbers of people, food is theatre, so what better time to combine the two into the slight, sweet, determinedly socially conscious evening that is Gastronauts? The Royal Court "happening" of sorts is catering to audiences of 60 per show during its sellout run. A devised piece that turns playgoers into diners while also asking them to question the ethics and ethos of food, the show in its questioning impulse seems the perfect antidote to festive-season excess. That said, some may be too busy pigging out on the crispy kale - please sir, may I have some more? - to give the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
I guess the BBC can't afford researchers or fact-checkers these days. If they could, perhaps something of substance might have arisen from their vacuous Culture Show profile of Vicky Featherstone, the gifted new artistic director of the Royal Court. Oh, and they have might have got the theatre's actual postcode right (SW1W 8AS, as per the Court website), rather than insisting twice on air that it's in (neighbouring) SW3. I mean, if you're going to be so careless with the details, what hope is there for the bigger picture? Precious little, on the evidence of this half-hour summation of a Read more ...