Weather Afternoon: 14°c Light showers Tonight: 9°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

quoteNew Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of itquote

Andrew O'Hagan The Twilight Saga: New Moon Theatre

Henry Hitchings

quoteA smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusionquote

Henry Hitchings Cock Restaurants

David Sexton

quoteKitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave quote

David Sexton Kitchen W8

Reader reviews

Film

Adam, Harrow

quoteToo long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effectsquote

2012 Theatre

Rob, London

quoteThis is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flawsquote

The Habit Of Art Music

Bernard, London

quoteAlex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factorquote

Alexandra Burke

Theatre & comedy reviews London,

Wallace Shawn Season: Aunt Dan And Lemon

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 Henry Hitchings's rating
Evening Standard rating Reader rating
 Add your review

Dir: Dominic Cooke.
Cast: Lorraine Ashbourne, Jane Horrocks, Mary Roscoe


Description: Wallace Shawn's drama about a man's favourite aunt and the stories that she told him as a child. Directed by Dominic Cooke.


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

 

Aunt Dan and Lemon's sour taste

By Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard  28.05.09
 
Aunt Dan & Lemon

Impressive: Scarlett Johnson as Mandy and Jane Horrocks as Lemon

Look here too

The title of Wallace Shawn’s 1985 play makes it sound like a children’s story. But although Lemon (Jane Horrocks) is waifish and even winsome, there’s nothing cute or reassuring about this talky, fragmented essay in moral gymnastics.

The action — if we can call it that, for this is a play that could easily be performed on the radio — is bookended by two of Shawn’s characteristically long speeches, both by Lemon.

In between, there are flashbacks to her childhood and to events she heard about from family friend Danielle, a garrulous and sassy Oxford don otherwise known as Aunt Dan.

The summer she was 11, Lemon fell under the older woman’s influence; Aunt Dan would visit her at bedtime and tell her “about every complicated subject in the world”. Aunt Dan’s unorthodox ideas — among them the notion that Henry Kissinger was “a simple, warm, affectionate man” — inform Lemon’s worldview, and the sickly twentysomething we see at the start and close of the play is really a crank, who praises the Nazis for their “refreshing” lack of compassion and seems to think there is hardly any difference between squashing a cockroach and committing genocide.

Lemon’s tone is polite and therefore has an air of apparent reasonableness. But the case she makes for believing the rebarbative — that the gap between a decent person and a monster is practically invisible — is meant to test the audience’s forensic powers.

Besides inviting us to pick holes in her logic, Shawn expects us to examine the boundaries in our own moral lives. What does it mean to exercise power? When does the end not justify the means?

In the central role of Lemon, Jane Horrocks is impressive. She switches deftly between the comic and the pathetic, adopting an array of tones: conspiratorial, steely, preacherly, wide-eyed.

As the supposedly compelling Aunt Dan, Lorraine Ashbourne is too strident but the smaller roles in the flashbacks are sharply directed by Dominic Cooke and solidly acted: Paul Chahidi and Martin McDougall catch the eye, while Scarlett Johnson relishes her turn as a ruthless seductress.

Still, this is a bizarre and unsatisfying play. Shawn deliberately offers little in the way of either story or closure. He wants before all else to challenge the audience’s apathy. He may succeed in this but his writing is structurally frustrating and rhetorically overbearing. Aunt Dan and Lemon will make audiences squirm — and not always for the reasons intended.

Until 27 June.
Information: 020 7565 5000,
www.royalcourttheatre.com.

More


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

 

Reader reviews (2)

 Add your review

Henry Hitchings is being incredibly kind. during Dans "speeches" i wanted to scream "shut up for gods sake!!!" possibly the worse play i have seen. ever.

- Trace, london

Agreed. Who's idea was the Wallace Shawn season?? I had more fun daydreaming in my head while waiting for the show's 1.5 hours to be up.

- Susan Belleview, 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
Afternoon
Light showers
14°c
Tonight
Light showers
9°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