There are three obvious ‘wow’ moments in the Royal Court Theatre’s seventieth birthday programme. Two are starry revivals of classic plays from the theatre’s past: Man to Man starring Tilda Swinton and Krapp’s Last Tape with Gary Oldman.
The third is a very modern coup: the modestly-sized new writing theatre has bagged the UK debut of Kimberley Belflower’s US smash John Protcor is the Villain, a wholesale transfer of Danya Taymor’s hit Broadway production.
The play does in fact have a link to the Royal Court, being a very playful post-#MeToo riff on Arthur Miller’s landmark The Crucible, which premiered at the Court during its very first season, 70 years ago in 2026. Here the action is set in a high school and a class studying The Crucible, with a debate over the morality of the actions of the play’s nominal hero Proctor finding head-spinning parallels in the student-teacher relationships in the ‘real world’. Plus: there are pop songs from the likes of Lorde and Taylor Swift.
The play’s Broadway success owes a lot to the star casting of Sadie Sink of Stranger Things fame – casting has not been annoinced for this UK production, and Sink seems like an outside chance at best. But it is co-produced by West End big hitters Sonia Friedman and Wessex Grove, so don’t be surprised if it has a name cast and life beyond this initial run.
