Back from a mini tour of Yorkshire and Stockport and cheering for supporting act Indignation Meeting
Downstate, National Theatre, London
Set in a group home for sex offenders in Illinois, Bruce Norris's play pulls no punches
PIC CAP Punishing experience: Downstate Pic: Michael Brosilow
ALISTAR FINDLAY is mesmerised by this multiple ‘Visions of Scotland’ assault on the audience’s eyes and senses
The Star's critics ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA reviews I Am Love, The Penguin Lessons, Freaky Tales, The Thicket
MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
JOHN GREEN relishes photography that unfolds a longstanding and poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
DOWNSTATE is deeply uncomfortable viewing at times and it is all the better for it.
Two real-time extended scenes exclusively occupy the playing time — with the action framed in Todd Rosenthal’s meticulous, ultra-realist institutional setting — and, barely two minutes in, Andy is describing to his childhood abuser Fred how he used to fantasise about killing him by shoving the barrel of a gun down his throat.
The sanguine Fred, played with passive sensitivity throughout by Francis Guinan, seems oddly unmoved as he defies expectation to match Andy’s rage with an outpouring of repentance.
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