The King Of Hell’s Palace by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, Hampstead Theatre, 28 September 2019

We wanted to like this. The story, about a medical scandal and whistle-blowing, set in rural China in 1992, sounded right up our street.

Playwright Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig makes a compelling case for her play here…

…but we found the play itself stilted in style, the characters one-dimensional and the story rather too unsubtly obvious.

Chinese theatre perhaps has some of the above characteristics embedded in its culture, but Janie and I are familiar enough with China – we’ve been going there on and off since 1993 for goodness sake – we just felt that this play missed many opportunities to make its points more thoughtfully.

We felt that a talented cast was doing its best with a lengthy wooden script, so try as we might we couldn’t muster the desire to return for 75-80 minutes more after the interval.

A rare miss from the Hampstead these days, although we have noticed a sense of “playing it safe” creeping in to the upstairs scheduling; hence we’re booking less up there. Our next visit will be downstairs.

Here is a link to the Hampstead’s resources on this play/production.

It’s had decent reviews – this link should find them for you.

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