Reviews
newspaper reviews
(L to R) Tony Curran, Monica Dolan, Lorcan Cranitch
Photography by Ivan Kyncl
Director: Kathryn Hunter, Designer: Liz Cooke, Lighting: Paule Constable, Composer: Stephen Warbeck, Sound: Paul Arditti
In its London premiere, the justly lauded American writer Rebecca Gilman presents us with a sustainedly intelligent and provoking examination of the lives of Deep South trailer trash Clint and Lisa. But these are not caricatures. Gilman has created a couple whose degeneracy is the vehicle for a searing analysis of moral codes, sexual abuse, fear, love, poverty and the value of a life.
Sunday Business 25-1-98
The potential trouble with American trailer-trash drama is that it will pander to an audience’s worst impulses, inviting them on a tourist trip to a southern states bedlam where they can snigger, in safe superiority, at the morally subnormal. Rebecca Gilman’s bracing, jet black comedy, The Glory of Living, never allows you that easy response, nor does Kathryn Hunter’s production, which brilliantly reinforces the sense of casual shock.
The Independent 20-1-99
What can one say? Except that plays don’t come much tougher, or more compassionate, than 33-year-old American Rebecca Gilman’s The Glory of Living, which launches the Royal Court’s final West End season. It’s a viscerally powerful piece that, not unlike Bond’s Saved, makes you look closely at a violent sub-culture from which you would normally shrink.
The Guardian 19-1-99
