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!