Cutting Through The Carnival: Several Sketches & Short Pieces By Various Young Writers, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 17 August 2001

The Royal Court is really good at finding ways to showcase the work of young writers who are working with their various programmes. In truth, Janie and I are not so good at turning up to see those showcase performances; we do so rarely, although we were going through a bit of a phase of it at the turn of the century.

On this occasion, we braved Sloane Square on a Friday evening to see this miscellany of pieces connected with the Notting Hill Carnival. Timely, fewer than 10 days before carnival.

As you might expect, it was a mixed bag.

This will have been our first sighting of Leo Butler’s writing. In truth I don’t recall making a mental note about his material based on this showcase. We went to see his play Redundant a few weeks later, but I suspect that I had already booked that before 17 August!

Drag-On by Emmanuel De Nasciemento & Local by Arzhang Pezhman, Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, 11 November 2000

This evening in the theatre was part of that year’s Royal Court “Exposure Young Writers 2000” programme. Janie and I were especially impressed by the second play we saw.

Dominic Cavendish agreed with our assessment, while being pretty impressed with all of it, including the pairing of plays we didn’t see.

Exposure Cavendish Telegraph Exposure Cavendish Telegraph 25 Oct 2000 The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Rachel Thackray in The Guardian was less sure about all of it:

Exposure Thackray Guardian Exposure Thackray Guardian 21 Oct 2000 The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Rachel Halliburton in the Standard pretty much agreed with us, liking both but especially liking Local.

Exposure Halliburton Standard Exposure Halliburton Standard 20 Oct 2000 Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

We have subsequently seen a lot of plays on these subjects, but at that time the subject matter and style seemed, to us, very fresh and encouraging for British theatre.