Royal Court Theatre

Nicola Slavin, MyVillage   13-03-2008

Scarborough - March 08Entering the Royal Court�s Jerwood Theatre Upstairs can often be an unusual experience and the staging of Fiona Evans� Edinburgh Fringe hit is no different. Ushered through a floral-wallpapered landing complete with postcards and photos of Princess Di into a near-perfect recreation of a Scarborough hotel room, the intimacy of the setting is immediately obvious as audience members are directed to sit around the outside of the room using cushions on the floor or perching on windowsills. In the middle of the room, Lauren (Holly Atkins) and Daz (Jack O�Connell) sit on a double bed, staring blankly ahead as the audience shuffles around them. As theatre experiences go, this is pretty unique. Intrusive, exciting and uncomfortable � watching the actors shout, scream and have sex just feet away from your position on the floor, it feels more like spying on other people�s lives than watching a play. In this sense the Royal Court�s staging is spot on: Scarborough makes for an uncomfortable piece of theatre. A nearly-30-year-old teacher takes a nearly-16-year-old pupil away for a dirty weekend. The Royal Court have taken this scenario further by staging it firstly with a female teacher and male pupil (Atkins and O�Connell) and then with the roles reversed (with Daniel Mays as teacher Aiden and Rebecca Ryan as his schoolgirl lover Beth). Both scenarios beg all sorts of questions but, as the consequences of the relationships unfold, making moral judgements is not easy. Evans� script, coupled with fantastic performances from Atkins and O�Connell, makes the Lauren/Daz relationship completely believable: Daz is a schoolboy who looks older than his years and has the confidence of a man while Lauren is as giggly and breathless as any 15-year-old going out with the most popular boy in her year. When she speaks of having �never been a teenager,� using it as an excuse for her relationship with Daz, she is as irresponsible and selfish as any stereotypical teenager. As Daz plies her with cheap alcopops and kicks condoms under the bed, she refuses to leave the room, preferring to stay in, laughing at Daz�s jokes. In Scarborough, at least, their relationship seems pretty equal. The Aiden/Beth relationship, however, makes for more uncomfortable viewing. The script remains the same for both couples, which invites some pretty difficult questions. When Beth tells Aiden she loves him and he responds by pushing her back on to the bed, it somehow makes her seem more vulnerable than when the same scene takes place with Lauren and Daz. Mays does not play Aiden as a predatory paedophile, nor indeed does the script suggest he is, but perhaps because Ryan is a slim, childlike girl, dancing around to her music and squealing with delight when she catches Aiden out with a joke about bumping into the headteacher, their relationship has a more sinister edge. In juxtaposing the two stories in this way, the production asks tough questions: why does an older male seems more predatory than an older female? Something that we as a society may still have to question�

Amanda   13-03-2008

I've eaten at the Royal Court Theatre before, and it was pretty good. Once the theatre crowd had gone through, the place was quiet and quite soothing, actually. So much so that I thought I'd take a friend there last night, someone I hadn't seen for a while. Well, last night the only word I can think to describe the bar was 'mental.' By the time we sat down, the waiter was very keen to get our order at once. But we wanted to talk, naturally. So we ordered a drink and put down the menus and chatted. In a flash he was over, pen in hand. I'm sorry I said, and pretended to look at the menu. Then he went away and we started talking again. Two minutes later and he was back, pen in hand, notebook ready. This happened about five times.When the food came it looked as though it had been prepared with no sort of care or attention. Which was a real shame, because the burger tasted good, and my friend said her chicken was good too. The greens were a bit pathetic, they were wilted greens, with a few dots of olive oil thrown over the top, and I wondered if they should have been there or not. Each extra dish was ?2.95, and it really wasn't worth that. After we shared a brownie, which was pretty delicious, and there was a fair bit of cream. The waiter had said that particular dessert was big enough for two. Well it wasn't. I wanted more. Lots more. So much so that when I left the restaurant, having been rushed out of there and feeling a bit pissed off at the ?40 bill, I went on a chocolate hunt like a woman possessed