Tag: Mark Richards

Boy Gets Girl by Rebecca Gilman, Royal Court Theatre, 3 November 2001

We rated this one:

…excellent.

Memorable too, in its creepiness. Yet it somehow Boy Gets Girl doesn’t seem to have hit the radar of the enduring drama canon. The Wikipedia entry at the time of writing this (October 2026) doesn’t even mention the Royal Court production, just the original production in Chicago.

We were treated to a terrific cast for the Royal Court production: Demetri Goritsas and Katrin Cartlidge in the lead roles. Fine support from Nicholas Day, Jason Watkins, Lucy Punch, Karl Johnson, and Lolly Susi – directed by Ian Rickson.

Nicholas de Jongh rated it highly in the Standard:

Boy Gets de Jongh Standard Boy Gets de Jongh Standard 8 Nov 2001 Evening Standard (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Charles Spencer was taken by the production and the ideas in it more than the play itself:

Boy Gets Spencer Telegraph Boy Gets Spencer Telegraph 9 Nov 2001 The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Our friend, Michael Billington, also has some reservations about the play but praises the end result at the Royal Court highly:

Boy Gets Billington Guardian Boy Gets Billington Guardian 8 Nov 2001 The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

Stalking is a discomforting and difficult topic – perhaps that fact, more than anything else, explains why this piece has somewhat vanished from view in the quarter-of-a-century since.

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!