Weather Morning: 13°c Light showers Afternoon: 14°c Light showers

Five of the Best...Shows
  1. The Kreutzer Sonata
  2. The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice
  3. Endgame
  4. Annie Get Your Gun
  5. Bedroom Farce

Critics' Choice

Film

Andrew O'Hagan

quoteAn awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurancequote

Andrew O'Hagan 2012 Theatre

Fiona Mountford

quoteThe show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie Cquote

Fiona Mountford Blood Brothers Music

John Aizlewood

quoteThe British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeedquote

John Aizlewood Muse

Reader reviews

Theatre

Rachel Dalziel

quoteI was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining playquote

Gilbert Is Dead Restaurants

Raja, London

quoteI totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian foodquote

Babbo Music

Katy, London

quoteAlways been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!quote

Muse

Theatre & comedy reviews London,

Faces In The Crowd

Your rating
one startwo starthree starfour starfive star
Click on a star to rate
Jerwood Theatre At The Royal Court
Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS

Evening Standard rating Fiona Mountford's rating
Evening Standard rating Reader rating
 Add your review

Dir: Clare Lizzimore.
Cast: Royal Court Theatre


Description: Clare Lizzimore directs Leo Butler's drama, in which a man's past catches up with him, forcing him to examine the debts he owes.


Trains: Tube: Sloane Square Overground network

Phone: 0207565 5000
Website: www.royalcourttheatre.com

 
Please wait the page is loading extra content
  • Show details
  • Hide details
  • Book Online
  • Show map
Close X

Directions

 

Emotional debt in Faces in the Crowd

By Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard  22.10.08
 
Faces in the Crowd

Marriage in trouble: Joanne (Amanda Drew) and Dave (Con O’Neill) prowl like caged animals about their minimalist flat

Look here too

It’s not a perfect match, but Faces in the Crowd is the nearest theatre has yet come to a credit crunch play. There’s talk of excessive buying on plastic and debt consolidation plans and, in the middle of one particularly impassioned speech, we half expect Robert Peston to leap out and start expostulating. Nonetheless, the kind of debt that really concerns playwright Leo Butler is emotional, the sort that can’t be whittled away via minimum monthly repayments.

Thanks to William Fricker and Rae Smith’s scintillating design, we look down at the action from on high, as if at a pit at the zoo. It’s actually a sleek, minimalist London flat but that doesn’t stop Joanne (Amanda Drew) and Dave (Con O’Neill) from prowling like caged wild animals. Butler drip-feeds the information but gradually the facts emerge: the couple were married, but 10 years ago Dave escaped from Sheffield to London, cutting himself off from Joanne and his family. Now she’s found him again and it’s payback time.

Butler worries at some weighty themes in his spare script, covering not only our have-now-pay-later culture but also the failure of feminist rhetoric when countered with the brutal facts of female biology. Frustratingly, though, his theoretical arguments are not pushed far enough, and nor does he engage us sufficiently in the couple’s back-story for these 100 minutes to break free entirely from the smack of dramatic contrivance.

Director Clare Lizzimore isn’t going to give up easily, however. She offers a thrillingly no-holds-barred production, powered by commendably raw performances from Drew and O’Neill, who are required to spend a not-inconsiderable amount of time in graphic, fruitless attempts at lovemaking. From our lofty position, we feel like voyeurs. An intriguing evening.
Until 8 November (020 7565 5000).

More


Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.

 

Reader reviews (2)

 Add your review

How dare you!
That play was absolutly Amazing.
Amanda Drew's performance was out-standing. Her best performance in four years.
I definitely didn't waste my money as I enjoyed it very much, the dialogue was great, the acting was spot-on by both Amanda and Con!

I do admit there were parts in the play which were slightly iffy,
but it's still very excruciating to know you didn't enjoy 'Faces in the Crowd'.
I do Apologize if I sound Touchy.

I'm sure he only wrote the scripts like that because he wanted it to be clear. It may not be irrelevant by any meaning what so ever. It just may seem slightly on the irrelevant side to you.

- April Parkinson, Bristol

The worst play I have seen all year. One hour forty minutes felt like one year and forty days. Risible dialogue, poorly drawn characters with no understandable motivation for their behaviour. The male travelled the Thespian gamut of hangdog to Mr Shouty and back again, whilst the female went from miserable to miserable uber and so on for the duration of this interminable play. We were also subjected to bad sex followed by various gormless speeches of the 'society is to blame' and 'feminism promised me....' variety followed by yet more bad sex. This play seemed to have been directed by someone on vallium so I checked the script to see where the blame for this travesty could be laid - author or director - only to find pages and pages of irrelevant authorial stage 'direction' which had been yawningly followed to the letter by the director e.g. Joanne picks up glass. She sips. She places glass back down. She wanders about. She stares out of window, etc, etc. For pages! Avoid.

- Sine Murray, london


Add your comment

 

Your email address will not be published

Terms and conditions make text area bigger You have  characters left.


 
 


 
 
London's Weather
Morning
Light showers
13°c
Afternoon
Light showers
14°c
5 day forecast
 
 

Daily Mail Mail on Sunday Travel Mail This is Money Metro

Loot | Jobsite | Homes & property | London jobs | FindaProperty.com | Primelocation.com | Educate London | Holiday Villas