Royal Court
Year Out/Year In: Theatre Raises the Bar, From Old to NewSunday, 02 January 2011
One expects Shakespeare to be rediscovered afresh on the British stage (if not here, where?), and it was gratifying during 2010 to find the Royal Court - a venue all about the new - raising the authorial bar ever higher via an (almost) unbroken... Read more... |
Get Santa!, Royal CourtMonday, 13 December 2010
Incongruence is always interesting, so the news earlier this year that Anthony Neilson, bad-boy author of adult plays such as Penetrator, The Censor and The Wonderful World of Dissocia, was penning a Christmas play — suitable for kids — at the Royal... Read more... |
Kin, Royal Court TheatreWednesday, 24 November 2010
Middle-class family angst continues to be this season’s theme at the Royal Court Theatre, but this time it is seen through the eyes of 10-year-old girls at a 1990s boarding school. But don’t expect this to be an episode of Malory Towers or even the... Read more... |
Red Bud, Royal Court Theatre UpstairsMonday, 25 October 2010
They drink, they swear, they get high, they play air guitar: but it all looks a little sad, and more than a little desperate, when the red-blooded, all-American dudes involved are middle-aged, with the beer guts and the emotional baggage to match.... Read more... |
Tribes, Royal Court TheatreThursday, 21 October 2010
t's a nice historical twist that the Royal Court in London, a theatre once known for its kitchen-sink dramas, is having such a great run with plays about the middle classes; following the joys of Posh, Wanderlust and Clybourne Park comes Nina Raine’... Read more... |
The ArborTuesday, 19 October 2010
Verbatim drama, long established in theatre, has rarely been used in film. But director Clio Barnard uses the device to magnificent, and sometimes deliberately disjointing, effect in The Arbor, to tell the story of Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar... Read more... |
A Number, Menier Chocolate FactoryMonday, 04 October 2010
There are any number of ways, it's increasingly clear, to approach A Number. Caryl Churchill's astonishingly prismatic and beautiful play about genetic cloning, nature versus nurture and the ineffable mystery of existence as amplified by Shakespeare... Read more... |
Wanderlust, Royal Court TheatreFriday, 17 September 2010
Middle-class family angst is this season’s theme at the Royal Court Theatre. And, in his new play about sex and intimacy, which opened last night, playwright Nick Payne puts the lust in Wanderlust and creates a contemporary tale of wandering hands... Read more... |
Clybourne Park, Royal Court TheatreThursday, 02 September 2010
The American Dream is a great subject for theatre. Not only is it a powerful myth that animates millions, but it is also vulnerable to being subverted by generations of playwrights. Like an aged boxer, it is liable to being floored by a well-aimed... Read more... |
Site-Specific Theatre: theartsdesk round-upSaturday, 10 July 2010
There is no consensus about what site-specific theatre actually constitutes. Does it grow organically out of the space in which the theatre piece is performed, and can therefore be staged nowhere else? Or is it no more than any theatre piece which... Read more... |
Sucker Punch, Royal Court TheatreMonday, 21 June 2010
The poster for Sucker Punch, Roy Williams's ambitious new play about boxing and race during the schism-prone age of Margaret Thatcher, promises a sort of black British Raging Bull: There in one graphic image are the blood and sweat, the bravado and... Read more... |
Ingredient X, Royal Court TheatreWednesday, 26 May 2010
Nick Grosso is a good example of the “now you see him, now you don’t” playwright. In the mid-1990s, he was feted as a lads’ writer for his funny plays about masculinity, such as Peaches, Sweetheart and Real Classy Affair. Then he dropped out of view... Read more... |
