Royal Court - All New Seasons

Anyone still struggling, as I was - the season is available on TodayTix and, for the seats for Giant I was looking for, they were £2/ticket cheaper than booking direct with the Court...

Most frustrating website ever. I was considering taking advantage of the season bundle offer but just took one for Bluets in the end. Are prices really cheaper on TodayTix? Looked £2 more expensive for top price?

Looking at a random date for Giant (22 Oct), pricier tickets are £2 cheaper - top price is £58 on the RCT website but £56 on TodayTix. Cheapest tickets (Band D and E) are more expensive on TodayTix than the RCT. Same with Bluets, picking 11 June as the random date.

Dugsdi Days is now sold out, except for the Monday day tickets

Glad I've got tix for Giant!

LOL - I booked for Jeremy O. Harris too. Great opportunity to see him and there's a post-show talk that evening, but a lot of actors I'd like to see:Fiona Shaw,Adrian Lester,Monica Dolan...

I also enjoyed "Echo," which tonight turned out to feature Emilia Clarke (of "Game of Thrones" and Jamie Lloyd's "The Seagull").

Some spoilers follow. . .

It felt a little like David Lynch's "Twin Peaks," with a sense of place being specific (Berlin, Tehran, Sweden, the Royal Court) but also everywhere (floating through galaxies); with a sense of time being now, in the past and in the future all at once; with a doppelganger sense of two people being one person; with different languages and subtitles.

Its basically the story of the playwright being displaced from his home by politics, about his father being brave in the face of Iran's regime whereas he himself was not so brave (Clarke got to live through a moment of the playwright's fear).

Clarke was a little like Goldilocks, in that she had to wear white socks and shoes like the playwright was wearing and the shoes turned out to be "huge," as she exclaimed in wonder lol. Her face also shimmered golden in the warm spotlight, when set in front of images of galaxies and planets floating through space ("immigrants emigrating from the Big Bang" she said, repeating lines piped to her through an earpiece, continuing the playwright's theme of humans being "immigrants in time"), and her black or navy dress absorbed so much light that she looked like the serene sun, from Tellytubbies, a disembodied radiant golden face with shimmering golden hair and a beatific smile.

She was serene in mood, as well, recovering from admitted pre-show nerves as soon as she had a script to read off a laptop. How did she feel, the playwright asked? "Very calm" she said, sounding very calm. The playwright seemed disconcerted, as he confessed he felt "confused and lost in life." But it was his comforting script that made her feel calm lol.

Some bits were definitely live, as the playwright asked Clarke questions and followed up based on her answers. She was reading a book by the "Fleishman in Trouble" author, for example, and he commented about that. The playwright would then turn his camera, and at those moments, I assume, we switched to recorded bits, like the sneaky cuts Hitchcock made in his supposed "one shot" movie, "Rope."

The playwright's dog was called Echo, so that explains the title in part (lol) and I think Clarke's dog was called Ted.

All in all, Clarke brought a benign sense of calm and serenity to the piece, while the playwright brought his life story, his confession, his sense of everything being connected.

I thought the show was moving (will the playwright ever see Iran again?) and mysterious (the poetry of eternity and space always is), and unique (getting Clarke involved for one time only).

4 stars from me.

I went last night and saw Nick Mohammed - having read previous comments now I know that the calls dropping were not scripted! Nick was clearly a little nervous 'it's going to. be a long night' he repeated a couple of times when the connection got interrupted, and then the video came back but not the audio 😅 - and then when Nassim went out to the street with his dog lol.
I think the script worked well with this actor as they both played with the fact that they look alike, so when we move to the recorded part of Nassim remembering his last day in Teheran, it is believable (or kind of) when Nick replies to the questions pretending to be him. They were also both wearing a red shirt.
I also think that the more philosophical parts of the play are the least interesting, but overall I enjoyed the performance. Nick Mohammed was very good and very funny at times, and the text seemed to affect him a bit, he was visibly moved in parts.

Only came across this the day before the casting announcement - only the first preview had sold out. Now, quite a few. It’s a tiny space so not surprised! I’ve booked as intrigued as Anjana was phenomenal in Streetcar.

I just bookedd for this - one of the early (6.45) Saturday nights.

I booked Brace Brace for the cast and director.