Music

The Royal Court’s new artistic director Dominic Cooke wants to stage plays that put the theatre’s audience on the spot. No more of what he calls ‘cultural tourism’, watching stories about the dispossessed. This is a stinging, satirical start. Bruce Norris’ acid attack on America’s affluent, self-obsessed liberals – liberal that is in their condemnation of others – may well inspire our own playwrights to hit closer to home in the future. Thanksgiving is a traditional setting for family rows and Norris stages a real corker as househusband Clay and his hot-shot wife, Kelly, attempt to explain themselves to Mr Hadid, a recently-widowed cab driver. He is strangely interested in the value of the desirable items in their stylish home.

Norris depicts a rot that reaches back to the past. Clay and Kelly’s five- year-old daughter, Kayla, is suffering from a nasty rash on her genitalia and something’s gnawing the avocados. The right-on opinions of Clay and Kelly are in sharp contrast with those of his cynical, plastic surgeon brother, Cash, and his eastern-European girlfriend, Kalina. She combines her enthusiasm for America with racist comments about Jews, blacks and gypsies. Andrea Riseborough’s tough, tarty Kalina daubs make-up on Kayla’s face to give her a sexy look. But when Kelly seriously claims that the neglect and sarcasm she suffered as a child adds up to abuse, Kalina gives a matter-of-fact account of being raped by soldiers.  

‘Rich? You call this rich?’ exclaims Matthew Macfadyen’s adolescent Clay who jumps up and down when enraged. He and his wife are sufficiently affluent for their hypocrisies to be easily exposed. Sometimes I wanted Norris to use a finer, more penetrating needle. The shouting can get boring and the pay-off’s a mess but Cooke’s production is lethally on target, making the most of Norris’ deeply repellent characters.