Find out what is being said about Jack Nicholls’ play about prehistoric cannibalism which continues to play at the theatre until the 14th March.
WhatsOnStage: *** “There are echoes of Sarah Kane and Martin McDonagh in The Sh*theads, but Nicholls’ voice and imagination are defiantly his own, setting the action in and around a cave in prehistoric times, when the weather is destroying the land, and an ice age may be on the way.”
Broadway World: **** “The Shitheads is the epitome of a big swing that paid off: this weird, not-so-little debut play deserves to be a benchmark for those making new work that thinks outside the box.”
The Guardian: **** “Choosing wild imagination over accuracy, Anna Reid’s design artfully merges red-dust cave paintings with armchairs and lamps, and bones dangling down as decoration. The story seems to escape the confines of this stony home, grandeur demanded of its gruesomeness. Discovered through the Royal Court’s Open Submissions scheme, The Shitheads demonstrates the joy of greater risks being taken on our stages. The end would benefit from a trim, but this feral story soars with untamed life.”
A Young(ish) Perspective: **** “Pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in live theatre, this out-there production is totally unique.”
West End Best Friend: **** “Savage but sweet, unsettling yet strangely moving, The Shitheads marks Jack Nicholls as a playwright to watch.”
Theatre & Tonic: **** ” The Shitheads doesn’t feel polite or polished. It feels alive. And I’d much rather spend an evening in a cave with something that takes big swings than in safe territory with something that doesn’t.”
All That Dazzles: *** “In the end, The Sh*theads is like watching the earliest sparks of civilisation: people learning in real time and occasionally hitting on something true. It doesn’t quite nail its own story, but it’s a lively, imaginative debut with enough charm and peculiarity to leave its mark.”
London Theatre.co.uk: *** “The ensemble, which is completed by puppetry captain Scarlet Wilderink, are excellent and the play explores some interesting territory in a uniquely theatrical way. It makes an especially fitting choice for the Upstairs given its clear echoes of the in-yer-face generation. Nicholls seems a natural inheritor of Sarah Kane and Philip Ridley (who, surprisingly, has never been produced at the Royal Court) in his muscularity of language, proliferation of non-sequiturs, and unblinking savagery. A talent to keep an eye on, no doubt.”
The Independent: *** “The S***heads comes amid a buzzy, winning run for the Royal Court, and this is no outlier. While there are only a handful of moments in which this production really comes alive, it’s a confident, punchy, and dramatically substantial piece of theatre – exactly what you want from a new original.”
The Spy in the Stalls: **** “‘The Shitheads’ is a startling debut that grabs human nature by the antlers. Searching, disquieting and uncomfortably familiar, it’s a confronting watch that’s absolutely worth the journey.”
Time Out: **** “The Shitheads doesn’t leave us with lessons on how to survive a climate disaster; nor does it aim to. Rather, it is a piece of theatre that takes big swings, humorous and horrific, in an effort to remind us that we all do terrible things to survive. Violence and love go hand in hand. The human condition is eternal. Hunting those truths down is easy; they couldn’t hide from you if you tried.”
The Stage: *** “Muddy prehistoric debut drama is stylishly delivered.”
London Unattached: *** “Like the details of prehistoric life, The Shitheads is hard to pin down. It’s genuinely experimental theatre that’s allegorical mode ultimately caps its potential to touch the heart. But Nicholls’s desire to innovate narrative conventions – to animate the weird, shared zone of history and invention – speaks of a writer with great theatrical ambitions. The Shitheads is a tricky first play from a writer with promise.”
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