Tag: Dennis Kelly

The Ritual Slaughter of Gorge Mastromas by Dennis Kelly, Royal Court Theatre, 19 October 2013

A weird and dark play about an extreme capitalist. We like Dennis Kelly’s plays – they are always entertaining with dark twists and lots to think about. This one was no exception.

Writing up this play now (march 2018), in our Brexit/Trump infused society, the play seems very relevant and prescient.

The fine actor Tom Brooke seems to thrive on Dennis Kelly plays. Actually the whole cast was good. I think this was our first sighting of Ned Bennett’s work as a director (assisting Vicky Featherstone on this one) – our next sighting being the tremendous Pomona at the Orange Tree – even weirder:

Pomona by Alistair McDowall, Orange Tree Theatre, 15 November 2014

The Ritual Slaughter of Gorge Mastromas certainly kept me and Janie entertained  during and debating afterwards.

Click here for a link to the Royal Court resource for this play/production.

Below is the trailer vid, which is intriguing but not illuminating:

Below is an interview with Vicky Featherstone and Dennis Kelly:

This one divided the critics. Click here for a search term that finds the reviews.

Baby Girl by Roy Williams, DNA by Dennis Kelly and The Miracle by Lin Coghlan, Cottesloe Theatre, 23 February 2008

A mixed bag evening, mostly good stuff in the mix, with three short plays all with a “yoof” theme, at the Cottesloe.

We weren’t going to miss this one. Roy Williams we liked a lot when we first came across him at the Royal Court a few years before. Ditto Dennis Kelly, whose work we’d very much enjoyed at the Hampstead. Lin Coghlan was new to us.

We weren’t overly familiar with Paul Miller’s name as director then, although we had seen his work before and now (writing in 2016) know his work well at the Orange Tree.

Apparently this production emerged from the National Theatre’s Connections programme, getting young people involved in performing, although this production was picked up by and delivered by professionals, albeit some of them very young professionals.

There is an excellent, free RNT education workpack for these plays, which includes synopses and other educational materials to accompany the pieces – click here to download.

LondonTheatre.co.uk provides a useful cast & crew list and a short synopsis of each play.

Interesting reviews:

I think we liked the first two plays a fair bit more than the last, but two out of three really ain’t bad for this sort of evening, so we were thoroughly satisfied.

Taking Care of Baby, Dennis Kelly, Hampstead Theatre, 2 June 2007

Friday night at the Hampstead Theatre was our more regular habit, but the Carlos Perez concert had enticed us to the SBC the night before, so we plugged for the Saturday night for this play.

Probably just as well, because this was a truly troubling play that would not have worn well rushing to the theatre at the end of a stressful week.  It poses as a documentary drama about Donna McAuliffe, a woman convicted of murdering her infant children.  The story resembles in many ways the tragic Sally Clark case.

It was extremely well done and I am very glad we saw it.  We had enjoyed Dennis Kelly’s writing before, which was the main reason we booked it.  Hampstead was patchy to say the least in that era but the Dennis Kelly stuff was a rare exception and this one proved no exception to the exception.

Lyn Gardner spoke highly of it in the Guardian – click here.

As did Ian Shuttleworth for the FT – click here.

Philip Fisher in British Theatre Guide was less sure – click here.

Everyone agreed that Abigail Davies was marvellous.

I have the playtext for this one; unusual for the Hampstead but might well be worth a re-read, there was a lot going on in this play.