The Royal Court Archives - North West End UK

16Sep

By Phil MeikleNo Comments

London

Man to Man – The Royal Court

Casting call: Oscar-winning Hollywood actress required for an 85-minute solo performance. Costume and make-up: predominantly a string vest, bright red Y-fronts and boots. Yellow stains under the armpits, white paint encrusted across the face and body, and a requirement to guzzle beer and be showered in it. Let's be honest, there's only really one Oscar-winning actress with the nerve to take on this role eight times a week. Enter the genre-defying Tilda Swinton. Returning to the stage for the first time in nearly 40 years, Swinton revisits the role of Ella/Max, a woman who assumes the identity of her deceased husband, a crane operator, by wearing his clothes in order to survive the Nazi regime. Man to Man explores gender fluidity, conformity and grief, but Ella is denied the opportuni...

Godot’s To-Do List and Krapp’s Last Tape – The Royal Court

12May

By Eleanor HallNo Comments

London

Godot’s To-Do List and Krapp’s Last Tape – The Royal Court

The double bill at the Royal Court (Leo Simpe-Asante’s curtain raiser, followed by Samuel Beckett’s classic). Godot’s To-Do List charts an endless number of tasks for its protagonist, the number of which is quantified by a party popper sound effect. Flora Ashton’s quasi supermarket checkout voice is a playful antithesis to Shakeel Hakim’s Godot, a frantic figure decked out in suit and bowler hat. Such tasks range from the banal to the impossible to the repetitive, with chunks of overlapping lines generating either acute tension or comedy. In this world, assumptions are questioned or subverted: i.e. when it is suggested that the omnipotent voice would make a good one for something akin to a mindfulness podcast, it later traps Godot within in a repeated instruction to ‘take a breath’. ...

14Feb

By Ralph JeffreysNo Comments

London

More Life – The Royal Court

More Life is an exceptional and bold production, taking an ambitious and complex story and realising it expertly on stage. The play takes us inside the research lab of Edius, who are trying to upload the consciousness of dead people back into new, robotic bodies. After many failed attempts, Bridget is uploaded, and the promising signs she displays lead Victor (Marc Elliott) into a spiralling obsession with making her ‘work’, no matter her suffering and despite the objections of his lab assistant, Mike (Lewis Mackinnon). This torment leads Bridget (Alison Halstead) to break free of her captivity, running to the only place she can, the house of her former husband, Harry (Tim McMullan), and his wife Davina (Helen Schlesinger). Through this, the play explores the ethics of this search for ‘...

3Dec

By Alan Stuart MalinNo Comments

London

Expendable – The Royal Court

Emteaz Hussain's ‘Expendable’ bravely tackles the harrowing realities of fear, misogyny, and the fractures within communities targeted by media and public hysteria. Inspired by the devastating fallout from child-grooming scandals in the North of England, the play presents a gripping exploration of these themes through the lens of one British-Pakistani family. The story unfolds entirely within the intimate confines of a kitchen-diner, meticulously designed by Natasha Jenkins. The set is more than a backdrop, it’s a character in itself, immersing the audience in domestic chaos with its scents of chopped onions, cooking pizza and antiseptic, and the hum of boiling kettles. Immersing the audience on both sensory and emotional level, this setting reinforces the play’s focus on a very pri...