Royal Court
Pity, Royal Court review - whacked-out and wearingSaturday, 21 July 2018
The apocalypse arrives as a series of collegiate sketches in the aptly-named Pity, the Rory Mullarkey play that may well prompt sympathy for audiences who unwittingly find themselves in attendance. Less provocative by far than this same writer's... Read more... |
One for Sorrow, Royal Court review - imploding family dramaThursday, 28 June 2018
It’s the stuff of nightmares. There’s a massive explosion, the sound of smashing glass, falling debris and police sirens. Gunshots. Panic in the streets. It could be the November 2015 Paris terror attacks, in which the Bataclan venue was the scene... Read more... |
Notes From the Field, Royal Court review - sobering report from the frontline of raceSaturday, 16 June 2018
Anna Deavere Smith contains multitudes. As the solo performance artist recounts the testimonies she has selected from the more than 250 people she interviewed for this portrait of inequality and the criminal justice system in America, it is as if... Read more... |
The Prudes, Royal Court review - hilarious but frustrating sex showWednesday, 25 April 2018
Playwright Anthony Neilson has always been fascinated by sex. I mean, who isn’t? But he has made it a central part of his career. In his bad-boy in-yer-face phase, from the early 1990s to about the mid-2000s, he pioneered a type of theatre that... Read more... |
Instructions for Correct Assembly, Royal Court review - Jane Horrocks in Middle England 'Westworld'Monday, 16 April 2018
There’s a whole universe which British theatre has yet to explore properly – it’s called the sci-fi imagination. Although this place is familiar from countless films and television series, it is more or less a stranger to our stages. With notable... Read more... |
Black Men Walking, Royal Court review - inspiring and exhilaratingFriday, 23 March 2018
In the same week that saw the arrival of Arinzé Kene’s Misty, a play that passionately questions the clichés of plays about black Britons (you know, gun crime, knife crime and domestic abuse), Black Men Walking opens at the Royal Court. Having... Read more... |
Girls & Boys, Royal Court review - Carey Mulligan is stunningly brilliantFriday, 16 February 2018
This is Carey Mulligan week. She appears, improbably enough, as a hard-nosed cop in David Hare’s BBC thriller Collateral, as well as onstage at the Royal Court in London’s Sloane Square (she’s much better live than on film). In a 90-minute monologue... Read more... |
Gundog, Royal Court review - tedious and inconsequentialThursday, 08 February 2018
First the goats, and now the sheep – has this venue become an urban farm? Rural life, which was once so central to our English pastoral culture, is now largely absent from metropolitan stages. And from our culture. Apart from The Archers or the... Read more... |
Rita, Sue and Bob Too, Royal Court review - iconic 1980s title makes a welcome returnSaturday, 13 January 2018
The revival that almost didn't make it into town has got the Royal Court's 2018 mainstage offerings off to a rousing start. For a while, it looked as if this fresh appraisal of a benchmark 1982 Court title would close on the road, a casualty of the... Read more... |
My Mum's a Twat, Royal Court review - Patsy Ferran shines in a solo play that looks back in angerThursday, 11 January 2018
That ages-old dictum "write what you know" has given rise to the intriguingly titled My Mum's a Twat, in which the Royal Court's delightful head of press, Anoushka Warden, here turns first-time playwright, much as the Hampstead Theatre's then-press... Read more... |
Best of 2017: TheatreSaturday, 30 December 2017
Year-end wrap-ups function as both remembrances of things past and time capsules, attempts to preserve an experience to which audiences, for the most part, have said farewell. (It's different, of course, for films, which remain available to us... Read more... |
Goats, Royal Court review - unfocused and muddledSaturday, 02 December 2017
The civil war in Syria spawns image after image of hell on earth. Staging the stories of that conflict presents a challenge to playwrights: how do you write about horror in a way that is both accurate and entertaining? Goats, by Syrian playwright... Read more... |
