Royal Court
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 ...
Laura de Lisle
Edition 2 of Living Newspaper: A Counter Narrative, an experimental new piece of online theatre from the Royal Court, doesn’t mess around. Within minutes, a cry of "Tory scum" is echoing around the Jerwood Theatre – the refrain of an anarchic musical number presided over by a mannequin painted blue, wearing a shaggy blond wig. “Kids cant eat but They’re tryna tell/You its the statues that need saving?” raps grime producer Jammz, setting out exactly where the 27 creators of Living Newspaper stand. Those seeking apolitical escapism should look away now. But everything is political, Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The strength of the response to the re-emergence of the Black Lives Matter campaign has provoked some theatres to create provocative new work. Often, the keynote is personal feeling. One recent example is the Bush Theatre’s Protest: Black Lives Matter, which mixes extremely personal emotions with formal choices that make it very difficult to review the work as if it was just straight theatre. Now the Royal Court has come up with My White Best Friend (And Other Letters Left Unsaid), curated by playwright Rachel De-Lahay and director Milli Bhatia, an online festival — which took place on 13-17 Read more ...
Matt Wolf
One of the most blistering stage performances in recent memory gets a renewed lease on life with the streaming of the 2019 screen version, aired last autumn on BBC Four, of Cyprus Avenue, the David Ireland play in which Stephen Rea unravels to memorable and merciless effect.A co-production between Dublin’s Abbey Theatre and the Royal Court (and seen later at New York’s Public Theatre), Ireland’s depiction of a mind in meltdown was a galvanic experience within the intimate confines of the Court’s tiny Theatre Upstairs almost exactly four years ago. The Court’s artistic director Vicky Read more ...
aleks.sierz
On my way to see this show, I see an urban fox. Before I can take a photo, it scrambles away. And I'm sure that, as it goes, it winks at me. This weird moment is a great prologue to EV Crowe's new play, virtually a monologue starring Katherine Parkinson, which is weird, and then some. And then some more. Although it is very short, at just over an hour long, it is a powerful account of female middle-class anxieties in Britain today. A classic Royal Court play, it is directed by this venue's artistic director Vicky Featherstone.The story, such as it is, starts with Viv, a typical middle-class Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Last night, I discovered the gasp index. Or maybe just re-discovered. The what? The gasp index. It's when you see a show that keeps making you exhale, sometimes audibly, sometimes quietly. Tonight I gasped about five times, then I stopped counting – I was hooked. I was obviously in the right place: the Royal Court has the reputation of being a powerhouse (to use a marketing term) of new writing. Yet, often my experience here has been of seeing old writing in a youthful guise; but this time was differenet – it feels like the real thing. From the start, Mancunian playwright Miriam Battye's Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The trouble with prejudice is that you can't control how other people see you. At the start of her career, playwright Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti's work was set in her own Sikh community. But, like other playwrights from similar backgrounds, she has tended to be pigeonholed in the category of "Asian playwright", and expected to write about clichéd subjects such as arranged marriage or religion. Now, however, she vigorously breaks free with this new play at the Royal Court, a story about life in contemporary Britain. This time she has expanded her cast of characters by creating a wonderfully Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Eve Leigh is an experimental playwright who has tackled difficult issues for more than a decade. Yet most members of the public will know her, and her actor husband Tom Penn, as the neighbours who recorded an altercation between Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds in June this year. At least, that's what it says on the internet. But don't let this distract you. Her new play, Midnight Movie, marks her debut at the Royal Court and takes as its subject the hypnotic attractions of the net. In particular, it explores the way that people with a disability can use the digital world for good as well as Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Memory involves places, people, things and words, especially words. This abstract proposition is given knotty life in Welsh playwright Ed Thomas's extraordinary new play, On Bear Ridge, which comes to the Royal Court after opening at the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff last month. Over a compellingly Beckettian 85 minutes, conceived and staged as a rare example of metaphysical theatre, he shows how the decay of language eats away at memory, identity and life. Yes, it's a grim story of loss in a metaphorically resonant absurdist fable. And one in which Rhys Ifans performs a masterclass in Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Sabrina Mahfouz is a British-Egyptian writer who has explored issues of Muslim and British identity in various formats. Her work includes poetry, fiction, anthologies and performances, as well as plays. And she's pretty prolific. Since her Dry Ice was staged at the Bush in 2011, she has written some 18 other plays, of various lengths. Now she makes her debut at the Royal Court, the capital's premiere new writing theatre, with a short play that boasts an intriguing title, A History of Water in the Middle East, and which features Mahfouz in the cast. It is also part of the recent trend for gig Read more ...
aleks.sierz
At the age of 81, Caryl Churchill, Britain's greatest living playwright, is still going strong. Her latest is a typically imaginative quartet of short plays. Each of them is vividly distinct, being linguistically agile, theatrically pleasurable and emotionally dark, yet all are also united by the common theme of folk tales and strongly archetypal stories. As one of the Royal Court's most characteristic writers, it is fitting that her newest work enjoys a superbly high-definition production, complete with actors of the caliber of Toby Jones, Deborah Findlay and Tom Mothersdale. It's as if Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Playwright and performer Tim Crouch is one of Britain's most innovative creatives, with a big back catalogue of challenging and stimulating stage work. Typically he tells stories about profound loss, while simultaneously questioning the basis of theatrical representation: how is what we see on stage true? In what way is it real? And how can you tell? His latest, which comes hotfoot from the Edinburgh Festival to London's Royal Court – in an already much praised production from the National Theatre of Scotland – is, as its title archly suggests, about a messianic cult.As the audience files Read more ...