Theatre Uncut

David Greig, Mark Ravenhill, Anders Lustgarten, Lucy Kirkwood
Traverse 1

This project first saw the light of day in March. On a single day, they were seen in 89 different places.

Now, Traverse has repeated the experience. This was always intended to be a scratch performance with the directors and actors only meeting on the day.

This led to a feeling of fellowship between all involved, which is highly appropriate to the subject matter of individuals suffering as a result of the failures of government and big business.

Theatre Uncut features eight short plays that look sardonically at the cuts that have been necessitated by the global financial recession and the Big Society that is supposed to paper over the cracks.

The plays themselves are all worthy and though a couple are fairly lightweight, others could easily be developed into something longer for full production

David Greig looking at care in the community or lack of it and Mark Ravenhill, wittily viewing today's students from the perspective of their agitprop predecessors 50 years ago, were always likely to be amongst the stars.

Pleasingly, younger writers such as Anders Lustgarten with a witty post-Marxist diatribe and Lucy Kirkwood who provides a bitterly funny cuts satire make just as significant a contribution.

Rather than considering each playlet at this time, BTG will review the published script soon and give these works fuller attention than would be possible based on almost unrehearsed script in hand readings.

Reviewer: Philip Fisher

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