Very enjoyable theatre trip on Tuesday to see this new play. Was really up to the Almeidas best standards. Toby Jones in particular was excellent and as ever the deign and direction were fab.
Michael Billington in his four star review fort The Guardian puts it so much better than I ever could.
Jez Butterworth's previous plays have taken us from sadistic Soho to remote Dartmoor. Now he forsakes extremes to transport us to one of those new estates, filled with trimly identical houses, on London's outer fringe. But, in the manner of American writers such as John Updike and Richard Ford, he compellingly shows us that suburbia breeds its own madness and melancholia.
His central figure, Ned, a demolition expert, constantly reruns videos of his biggest blasts. On top of this the nightmare-haunted Ned is convinced his teeming possessions, from a stuffed badger to a bust of Aldous Huxley, are being nicked. Ned's wife, Joy, views his progressive breakdown with a mockingly sardonic eye. After 11 years of stifling marriage, she also dreams of escape and comes on strong to next-door neighbour Dale, who hates his car-wash business but is terrified of abandoning his comforting suburban prison.
In a sense, there is nothing startlingly new about Butterworth's ideas. Not only American novelists but our own Alan Ayckbourn have all shown that lust and longing lurk around leafy estates. But Butterworth's play has a wild, contrapuntal humour beautifully articulated by Toby Jones's Ned in two outstanding scenes. Caught by his wife listening to a tape about oral sex techniques, Jones hilariously pretends he is absorbed in a funky Eric Clapton disc. Even better is the moment when the fitness-crazed Ned approaches a barbell with all manner of kung-fu kicks and, finally lifting it above his head, emits guttural howls worthy of King Lear. Jones's performance defines the tragi-comic nature of Butterworth's play.
Ian Rickson's beautifully precise production and Jeremy Herbert's transparent design also evoke a world in which diurnal routine is always in danger of descending into chaos.
Andrew Lincoln's Dale, in the course of inducting Ned into skipping and muscle-stretching exercises, suddenly shoots out his legs as if he were in a Bruce Lee movie. And Amanda Drew as Joy not only maintains an aura of cool disdain but shows her true sexual colours when she approaches her neighbour like one of Pinter's female sirens: A simple line such as "I'm thirsty Dale, why don't you fetch me a lemon?" becomes, in Drew's throaty rendition, an irresistible invitation.
After the more erratic The Night Heron and The Winterling, Butterworth shows that he has a compassionate understanding of the quiet desperation that stalks Britain's new estates. He exactly captures the mundane madness beneath the bland routine of affluence.
His central figure, Ned, a demolition expert, constantly reruns videos of his biggest blasts. On top of this the nightmare-haunted Ned is convinced his teeming possessions, from a stuffed badger to a bust of Aldous Huxley, are being nicked. Ned's wife, Joy, views his progressive breakdown with a mockingly sardonic eye. After 11 years of stifling marriage, she also dreams of escape and comes on strong to next-door neighbour Dale, who hates his car-wash business but is terrified of abandoning his comforting suburban prison.
In a sense, there is nothing startlingly new about Butterworth's ideas. Not only American novelists but our own Alan Ayckbourn have all shown that lust and longing lurk around leafy estates. But Butterworth's play has a wild, contrapuntal humour beautifully articulated by Toby Jones's Ned in two outstanding scenes. Caught by his wife listening to a tape about oral sex techniques, Jones hilariously pretends he is absorbed in a funky Eric Clapton disc. Even better is the moment when the fitness-crazed Ned approaches a barbell with all manner of kung-fu kicks and, finally lifting it above his head, emits guttural howls worthy of King Lear. Jones's performance defines the tragi-comic nature of Butterworth's play.
Ian Rickson's beautifully precise production and Jeremy Herbert's transparent design also evoke a world in which diurnal routine is always in danger of descending into chaos.
Andrew Lincoln's Dale, in the course of inducting Ned into skipping and muscle-stretching exercises, suddenly shoots out his legs as if he were in a Bruce Lee movie. And Amanda Drew as Joy not only maintains an aura of cool disdain but shows her true sexual colours when she approaches her neighbour like one of Pinter's female sirens: A simple line such as "I'm thirsty Dale, why don't you fetch me a lemon?" becomes, in Drew's throaty rendition, an irresistible invitation.
After the more erratic The Night Heron and The Winterling, Butterworth shows that he has a compassionate understanding of the quiet desperation that stalks Britain's new estates. He exactly captures the mundane madness beneath the bland routine of affluence.
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