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Blood

  • opened: 9/25/2003
  • closed: 10/25/2003
  • Royal Court Downstairs
  • Box Office: 020 7565 5100
  • Details:
  • Summary: Visit theARCHIVE to hear a discussion. Swedish dramatist Lars Noren's 1995 play centres on the highly disturbed life of a Chilean couple living in Paris, journalist Rosa and psychiatrist Eric, who fled the Pinochet regime 20 years ago, leaving their infant son behind in the hands of the junta. Now Nicholas Le Prevost's Eric is having an affair with a young patient of his called Luca (Tom Hardy), a man who doesn't know who his biological parents are, and it's not long before Francesca Annis's Rosa is bedding the youth too. Quite obviously, and self-consciously, referencing the story of Oedipus every step of the way, this often graphic update - directed by James Macdonald - stirred most critics to angry denunciations, and a handful to qualified admiration. 'Frankly, we have enough bad plays of our own without needing to import them from Scandinavia,' pooh-poohed Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph, leading the attack. 'Only masochists are likely to want to see so boring, silly, exploitative a play,' suggested Benedict Nightingale in the Times. 'All theatres have their lapses and Ian Rickson’s Royal Court has been excellent enough to be permitted one. But I’m still reeling at the mix of pretension (“the whole of South America is one colossal Oedipal tragedy”) and bad taste.' Pronouncing it an 'idiotic hunk of highbrow hokum', Paul Taylor in the Independent went on: 'Like those shoddy dramas that hitch a lift on the Holocaust, Blood comes across as exploitative of human suffering - not least in the scene where we see how the couple's Chilean ordeal has warped their sex life into role-play between torturer and victim. There were moments when I felt sure that the piece was going to be revealed as a stunt - a test by the Royal Court that the bullshit-detectors of its audience are still in working order.' John Peter in the Sunday Times groaned: 'I don't want to sound flippant, but Pinocohet could still be extradited, if only for causing this play to be written. The heroic integraity of the two fine actors is beyond praise.' Brian Logan in Time Out agreed: 'Director James Macdonald takes as seriously as he can a play that seldom stops beggaring belief. The coincidences Noren asks us to credit here, and how long it takes the characters to catch on, are spectacular.' In its defence Michael Billington, who judged it 'compelling', argued: 'As the play progresses and we see Luca's life impinging on the Sabatos' dessicated existence, we begin to realise that Noren is raising... the question of whether primal tragic patterns recur down the generations and whether, in the age of Kosovo, the Middle East conflict and African wars, the mask of civilisation is breaking down.' Susannah Clapp in the Observer praised the 'exemplary' production by James Macdonald: 'A production which glides, but in which every moment is articulated as if it meant something. Unfortunately it means very little.'
  • Author: Lars Noren (translated by Maja Zade)
  • Director: James Macdonald
  • Composer: Paul Englishby
  • Lyricist: n/aSet Designer: Hildegard Bechtler
  • Lighting Designer: Peter Mumford
  • Costume Designer: n/a
  • Choreographer: Liz Ranken
  • Cast Details: Francesca Annia (Rosa); Ingrid Lacey (Madeleine H); Nicholas Le Prevost (Eric); Tom Hardy (Luca).
  • Reference: More Info