About the Play:
Road was
one of Royal National Theatre of Britain's top 100 plays of the 20th
century.
Road is a full-length dramatic comedy by Jim Cartwright.
This modern-day classic explores the lives of the people who
live in an un-named road, in a deprived, working class area of
Lancashire during the Thatcher government – a time of high
unemployment in the north of England.
Road is a series of vignettes interspersed with monologues.
It is 1987. An unpopular leader is re-elected while the country is
still reeling from the effects of recession and lives in fear of
terrorist attacks. Times are tough, but for the residents of a street
in a deprived, working class area of Lancashire every night's a
party. In the course of one wild night, a drunken, foul-mouthed, but
charming guide named Scullery conducts a door by door tour of a
scruffy, depressed road in a small Lancashire town. Moving from
street corner to living room, from bedroom to kitchen, we meet the
inhabitants of young, middle-aged, and old, glimpsing their socially
and emotionally wretched lives. Road is an explicit and
arresting mix of humour and pathos that explores many themes but most
importantly community and the extraordinary resilience of the human
spirit.
Road is the first play written by Jim Cartwright,
and was first produced in London in 1986. The play was initially
performed at the Royal Court "Upstairs" Theatre, with
ex-Sex Pistol Edward Tudor-Pole as Scullery, moving "Downstairs"
in 1987 with Ian Dury as the narrator. It was an enormous hit in
London's West End and won the
Samuel Beckett Award, Drama Magazine's Best New Play Award, and was
joint winner of the Plays And Players Award, and The George Devine
Award. The play was subsequently presented by Lincoln Center
Theater at Off-Broadway's La Mama Annex in New York City in 1988.
Cast: 3 women, 4 men with
doubling (alternate casting: 6 women, 8 men)
What people say:
"Nothing I had read about Jim
Cartwright's Road – which actually
started life at the Theatre Upstairs last March and which is now
being revived again in the main house with Ian Dury – 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." — The
Guardian
"...sharp, funny, sad, angry
... The writing really is remarkably good – naive in the best
sense, shocking, hilarious, poignant, true." — BBC
Radio London
"Jim Cartwright's
scorching, bang-up-to minute play is a State 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
"The climax comes when two
flash lads have picked up two girls...This sequence is simply one of
the most unlikely, audacious and, in the event, riveting scenes to be
found currently in the theatre. ...Of the play itself enough has been
said to fill a dictionary with superlatives. The writing is tough,
funny, bitter, harrowing." — Financial Times
"A surreal vision of the
contemporary urban landscape...uncomfortable and magical, funny and
bitter. It is a northern Under Milk Wood, high on pills and booze."
— The Sunday Times
"...captures with bawdy and
frequently obscene precision what it is to be a living reject in a
small Lancashire town in 1986." — Jewish Chronicle
"Beneath the gags, the
playwright's rumbling sense of lost dignity resulting from
unemployment, chauvinism or from simply getting paralytically pissed,
give this stunning debut a perceptive and frightening reality."
— City Limits
"The most significant and
original new English play to appear in London for a long time. ...Mr.
Cartwright is asking the right question and he has something to say.
The question is, why is the world so hard?"
— The Observer
"The debut of a writer of
outstanding talent. This talent manifests itself in the skill
with which Mr. Cartwright depicts the stunted, impoverished lives,
full of regrets for the past and dreams of the future and in the
creation of people of a poetic demotic...." — The
Sunday Telegraph
About the Playwright:
Jim Cartwright is among Britain's best dramatists. His
plays are consistently performed around the world, where they have
won numerous awards, and been translated into 30 languages. He
trained as an actor at the Central School of Speech and Drama.
However, it is as a playwright that he has really made his mark. His
very first play, Road, won a number of awards before being
adapted for TV and broadcast by the BBC. He is probably best known
for his play The Rise and Fall of Little Voice.