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The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
Restaurants
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Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
Alex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factor
London,
Nick Curtis's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Ramin Gray.
Cast: Gerard Murphy
Description: A woman becomes more desparate in her attempts to keep her soldier lover near her, even though he has been called to fight in England. Drama set in 18th century occupied Ireland, written by Leo Butler. Contains strong language, violence and explicit scenes.
Trains: Tube: Kilburn/BR: Brondesbury 
Phone: 0207328 1000
Website: www.tricycle.co.uk
Torture: Capt Farrell (Edward Macliam), Lt Coyle (Eoin McCarthy) and Capt Skelton (JD Kelleher)
Leo Butler's play about split Catholic loyalties in occupied 18th century Limerick is ferocious and heartfelt and mostly well acted but teeters throughout on the brink of absurdity.
It's one of those Irish dramas where angry soldiers and filthy-but-proud peasants constantly harangue each other in improbably dense, lyrical language, as a prelude to hideous violence.
Ramin Gray's production for the RSC starts off bleak and just gets bleaker, with a lot of incoherent shouting and furious fighting. It's often hard to suppress a titter.
I'll Be the Devil is supposedly inspired by The Tempest. Medea and King Lear look like more obvious antecedents, and a programme note gives the best idea of what it's all about.
Some Irish Catholics who renounced or concealed their faith and enlisted in the British Army during the Seven Years War ended up back home, oppressing their own kind. One such is Eoin McCarthy's Lieutenant Coyle, who has sired two simpleton children on Derbhle Crotty's Maryanne, a dispossessed landowner who hates him. Although this, we discover, is the least of their shared problems.
Astute observations are buried somewhere in the script about psychological as well as physical dispossession and the mentality of invasion but they get rather swamped by all the hectic fury on stage.
One scene, in which Anglo-Irish soldiers tease then torture Coyle and his ragged idiot son Dermot (Tom Burke) goes on for ages but is played so fast and loud and angry it's impossible to comprehend the dialogue.
Butler is not big on subtlety. Eyes are gouged, pigs beheaded, a psalter urinated on, a crucifix applied rectally. Things get even darker when John McEnery's implacably callous English general turns up.
There are plus points. Butler comes up with some vivid lines which are unprintable here. Gray's production, given a strong sense of place and atmosphere by designer Lizzie Clachan, seems set to explode off the tiny Tricycle stage, especially in the elaborate fight scenes.
McCarthy's Coyle is a study in haggard desperation, and Crotty makes Maryanne's caustic rage believable, even when it turns inward on her and her children.
The sheer energy expended on stage, even by Tom Burke's too-refined but gabbling Dermot, is impressive. But the whole thing is too overcooked for my liking.
Anyone who has seen Martin McDonagh's wicked pastiches of such Irish dramas or remembers Holly Hunter hilariously strangling her vowels in By the Bog of Cats a few years agomay find it similarly hard to take seriously.
• Until 8 March (020 7328 1000).
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
This is a bold, sensual and intelligent play that dares to be a little different in style. Some of the scenes are wonderfully written. Others feel a little contrived or hermetic, and end up excluding the audience. The director makes some very counter-intuitive choices sometimes, and is more concerned with atmosphere than clarity, which doesn't always help the play make sense. The cramped proscenium stage of the tricycle is clearly not the stage the play was written for. It would have worked well at the young Vic. Nevertheless, it's obvious from this that Butler is a dramatist of huge talent, and that, unlike so many others, he is not content to play safe.
- Fred, London
Martin McDonagh doesn't write "wicked pastiches" - he writes bone headed demagogic pantomimes for lazy London theatre critics who've grown too tired to notice.
What a sneering review. I suppose the historical reality or the stakes for the players didn't engage this particular bright spark.
- Ferdinand, New York
Lyrical language peppered with profanities delivered beautifully with feeling by the whole cast. I did not recognize Nick Curtis's description of gabbled dialogue even in the more physical scenes nor his comparison to By the Bog of Cats.
Derbhle Crotty's Rosary mantra-like recitation of the Penal Laws was haunting and Samantha Young's portrayal of the simple other worldly daughter was heart wrenching while Gerard Murphy's Sergeant Browne was superbly menacing.
The Inn scene's lustrous opening tableau, reminiscent of contemporary paintings, all highlighted colours and dramatic textures descends into a Hogarthian scene of violence and debauchery.
Moving and appalling...
- Peter Elmore, London
This is not a play to appeal to London theatre critics. It depicts the physical reality of war and occupation where ideas are subordinate to the animal impulse to savagery and domination. It brings to the stage a part of human nature that most of us, thankfully, never experience, except as a contained and sanitised news report. In our world these things do seem absurd, unlikely and seeing them face-to-face may make us want to 'titter'. More fool us.
I found this play profoundly affecting, and on the night I saw it the audience became quieter and quieter and stiller and stiller throughout; war is usually explored through an exchange of ideas. What this play shows is that war has nothing to do with ideas.
I found the production thrilling: the set, costumes and mesmerizing use of music, as well as superb and passionate performances have stayed with me ever since. I would urge anyone who wants more from theatre than mild, quiet diversion to go and see it.
- Catriona Andrew, London
