I recall this being a very powerful play/production – archived in all its detail by the Royal Court here. This resource includes plenty of reviews, from the play’s original outing in Dublin and also from the Royal Court.
With Rhinoceros on downstairs at the same time, I suppose this was Romanian month at the Royal Court.
I remember we left feeling uncomfortable; sexual exploitation is that sort of subject on the stage – you feel a little complicit in the exploitation even though you know you’ve been watching a play. In this play that exploitation is as raw as a symbolic uncooked kebab.
Lots of good reviews shown in the Royal Court link above, but Michael Billington in the Guardian absolutely hated it – see here. He felt he’d seen it all before. So did Charles Spencer in the Telegraph – see here.
It certainly wasn’t a fun play, but it was very well acted – we were more with the good reviews than the haters.
My diary is silent on what we had for dinner after the play, but it might easily, ironically, have been some form of kebabs, as we would often as not go to Ranoush or Mohsen after the Royal Court. But perhaps we went to May’s for Chinese food on this occasion, even if that choice was a change of tack after seeing the play.
