Royal Court Theatre

A grim irony about the ongoing situation in the Middle East is that any work about life in Gaza will probably seem topical, even if it predates the most recent conflict. Syrian-Palestinian writer-performer Khawla Ibraheem stars in her own drama about the blackly comic anxiety of life in Gaza, with its name taken from the IDF’s penchant for dropping small bombs onto buildings in Palestone as ‘warning’ before blowing them up. A hit at last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, it transfers to the Royal Court directly after a short run in New York. Oliver Butler directs. 

There is, believe it or not, a tangible microgenre of plays about AI personality replicas being downloaded into new human bodies. David Farr’s A Dead Body in Taos and Jordan Harrison’s Marjorie Prime would be good recent examples; Caryl Churchill’s visionary cloning drama A Number feels like the originator of the species. It’s the sort of sci-fi theatre that does well: low budget but unnerving – you don’t need special effects for an actor to play an artificial human. Here’s another one. Under the name Kandinsky Theatre, Lauren Mooney and James Yeatman have devised an eclectic stream of science-rooted theatre shows, many of them for the New Diorama Theatre, new Royal Court boss David Byrne’s old gaff. Now they make their debut at the Court with an occasionally heavy-handed but ultimately moving drama about a woman brought back to life some 50 years after her death. Victor (Marc Elliott) is a scientist, working on bringing the dead back to life (the Frankenstein references are unsubtle but fully acknowledged). At some point in the past, the tech company he works for acquired the brains of a large number of dead people, whose next of kin signed them away to the corporation. Using Futuristic Science That You Don’t Need To Worry About, the brains have been digitally recreated and the personalities of the deceased are implanted into an artificial body, played by Alison Halstead. Most of them are failures: they either have imperfect memories, lack control of the body or, er,...

If it’s still a little early to get a clear handle on David Byrne’s programming at the Royal Court – because new plays take years from comissioning to programing – then he’s certainly brought in a few big names you doubt would have found a berth under his predecessor Vicky Featherstone. If the headline grabber in his first year was Nicholas Hytner directing a very starry, Nicholas Hytner-style cast in the excellent Giant, then the biggie from year two is clearly Robert Icke. Although as leftfield aesthetically as many Court alumni, the fact his career has largely been based around revivals of classics has meant new writing powerhouse the Royal Court has technically been off limits to him. However, as writer-director, Icke’s updated versions of the classics has pretty much been new plays in their own rights – he just happens to have not technically made one without some basis in a pre-existing work of drama. His Court debut Manhunt will see him do exactly that however: it’s an original drama based upon the life and death of Raoul Moat, the Newcastle man who went on the run after murdering his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend in 2010, culminating a manhunt with morbid and unexpected consequences.  Icke spoke a little about the show in his recent interview with us, which is about the most that has been said about it publicly, but expect a bit of money to be thrown behind it as it’s a co-production between the Court and West End super-producer Sonia Friedman. Icke pretty much...

Sarah Kane’s final play 4.48 Psychosis is one of the most famous productions in Royal Court Theatre history, not least for the circumstances under which it was originally staged: just 18 months after hear death, the bleak piece – which is in many ways closer to a poem than a play, with no discernible characters – was memorably described by the Guardian’s Michael Billington as ‘a 75-minute suicide note’.  This revival comes precisely 25 years on, in the Court’s tiny Upstairs theatre where the play originated, and sees director James Macdonald reunite with his original creative team and the original cast – particularly notable because one of them was RSC co-artistic director Daniel Evans. Despite how faithful it is to the past in many ways, the plan is not to simply restage a quarter century old production, but reinvent the play anew and perhaps banish the spectre of Kane’s death from proceedings. The play is, after all, endlessly malleable and open to interpretation. Inevitably this will sell out incredibly quickly as the decision to stage upstairs means supply will inevitably outstrip demand. As an RSC co-production – perhaps the cost of securing Evans’s services – it will go on to the more spacious Other Space in Stratford, with a final performance taking place, rather extraordinarily, at 4.48 in the morning.