Road

Reviews

Nothing I had read about Jim Cartwright’s Road ñ which actually started life at the Theatre Upstairs last March and which is now being revived again in the main house with Ian Dury ñ had quite prepared me for its emotional impact. John Osborne wanted a theatre that gave one “lessons in feeling.” Cartwright’s play does that, quickening our sympathy for the baffled young and old living in the blighted, scarred sections of our divided land.

– Guardian, Michael Billington

It is he most searing indictment of Thatcherite England I have seen for a long time. A superb cast of seven are unforgettable in their many roles including Susan Brown’s frustrated seductress, Jane Horrock’s embittered wide and Iain Glen’s Skinhead-turned Buddhist.

– Time Out, Ann McFerran

Of the play itself enough has been said to fill a dictionary with superlatives. The writing is tough, funny, bitter, harrowing.

– Financial Times, Claire Armitstead

Jim Cartwright’s scorching, bang-up-to minute play is a Sate of the Nation piece with a vengeance. The world he shows us is a raw one and his language, coupling obscenities and street poetry gives us a passionate, unavoidable truth about a dis-United Kingdom. The openness and originality of Simon Curtis’s production is a striking image for one theme in the play itself: humanity can be assertive, extraordinary and just plain lively in any sort of place.

– The Times, Jeremy Kingston

The most significant and original new English play to appear in London for a long time.

– The Observer