Child - Adam Arnold
Mother - Jan Chappell
Karl - Adam James
Older Woman - Sara Kestelman
Another Man - James Livingstone
Man - Ben Miles
Another Woman - Antoinette Tagoe
Young Woman - Jodie Taibi
Other Woman - Romy Tennant
Woman - Lia Williams
Directed by Sacha Wares
Designed by Miriam Beuther
seen in it's premiere run at the Royal Court Downstairs
All that is comfortable and beautiful about the Royal Court auditorium is hidden from view for this. WHY it wasn't staged upstairs is beyond me......half the audience capacity maybe but the cost of decking the hall and the reduction in the usual house seems crazy to me....and for what? So that this could be set in the interesting (maybe even innovative) premise of an enlarged tube train but with no good reason. If there is a relevance it passed me by but it was good to experience it.
By the time we were ready to start the cast had completely merged into the audience and that is probably the one and only way in which the tube thing was useful.
We are then subjected to a mostly traumatic, sometimes witty destruction of a relationship. In a sense, it seemed like a series of cameos or vignettes posing more questions than it answered. The performances, especially from Ben Miles & Lia Williams, were extraordinarily passionate but beautifully contained.
Celeb in the audience/bar: Toby Jones, Christopher Hampton (who may have been going Upstairs) and a really lovely bloke I remember from a 1970's band but can't quite place....black, big smile, side-burns.......
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