London
Human Animals
By Stef Smith

Royal Court Theatre to June 18
Jerwood Theatre Upstairs,
Sloane Square,
London SW1W 8AS

Mon-Sat 7.45pm; Thurs, Sat mats 3.00pm

Runs: 1hr 15 without interval

TICKETS 020 7565 -5000
In person: Mon–Sat, 10am-start of perf or 6pm if no show
On-line: www.royalcourttheatre.co.uk

Age guidance: 14+

Mondays all tickets £10; concs £5 off two top prices on daily standby; for 25s and under; School and HE groups of 8+; groups of 6+
Access: £12 + companion
*ID required. All discounts are subject to availability

Review: by Carole Woddis of performance seen Jan 27, 2016:

Prize-winning contemporary view of urgent contermporary problem
Scotland has a fantastic tradition for new writing and writers. Stef Smith is just the latest, a double award-winner for Swallow and the text for Cora Bissett’s powerful essay on human trafficking, Roadkill.

Smith has also been part of the Royal Court’s Young Writers Group. Human Animals bears many of its distinctive legacies: criss-crossing narratives, succinct, elliptical dialogue.

Smith’s sights this time are on something as urgent as human trafficking. The human animal and our endless capacity for destruction.

There’s a lot of it about at present as artists try to alert us to imminent dangers. Director Hamish Pirie and designer Camilla Clarke make the point as soon as we enter the Court’s Upstairs space – Clarke’s perspex reflecting the actors as if specimens in a zoo.

Environment and climate change as the pressing issue of our time has become Vicky Featherstone’s abiding theme during her Royal Court tenure. Whilst Caryl Churchill’s recent Escaped Alone occupied the theatre’s main stage a couple of months ago, Smith’s apocalyptic vision (somewhat mirroring Churchill’s Far Away) sounds a dire warning about the catastrophes awaiting our meddling and effects on Nature.

Remembering perhaps the funeral piles of cattle corpses during the foot and mouth epidemic, Smith sets about showing Nature – birds, especially pigeons and foxes – turning on each other and us, and our response. Destroy in order to preserve – a timely metaphor for the current political climate. Create enough fear and leave the human animal to do the rest. Turn on itself.

Smith’s villain of the piece, Si, works in what he calls `chemical distribution’ and looks to be making a financial killing as society collapses around him: homes and parks get burnt, a state of emergency gathers pace as relationships fall apart.

Smith transmits the mayhem cleverly through the tensions expressed in parallel personal lives – Stella Gonet’s widowed mother and her activist daughter, their neighbour, John and his odd pub drinking pal, Sargon Yelda’s smiling Si and Natalie Dew and Ashley Zhangazha’s innocent young married couple.

There is hope at the end of Smith’s dark tunnel; Nature and kindness do reassert themselves. But Pirie makes it a violent and tense, touch-and-go journey.

Human Animals
By Stef Smith

Cast:
Alex: Natalie Dew
John: Ian Gelder
Nancy: Stella Gonet
Lisa: Lisa McGrillis
Si: Sargon Yelda
Jamie: Ashley Zhangazha

Director: Hamish Pirie
Designer: Camilla Clarke
Lighting Designer: Lizzie Powell
Composer & Sound Designer: Mark Melville
Movement Director: Frauke Requardt
Casting Director: Amy Ball
Assistant Director: Sian Davila
Fight Director: Bret Yount

World premiere of Human Animals at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, May 18, 2016

For more info see: www.royalcourttheatre.co.uk

2016-05-28 10:01:13