"The Slip". Burton Taylor
Orla Wyatt writes about catastrophic nights. Unlike so many modern dramatists (like Miriam Battye, whose fascinating dissection of female friendship, Scenes With Girls , precedes The Slip at the Burton Taylor this week), Wyatt has no time for the drama of everyday life. She pits her nervous, immature characters against the remorseless, grown-up bureaucracy of British institutions like the Police and the NHS. Watching her work is like spending an evening in front of Casualty and Happy Valley concentrated into an intense hour of revelations and confrontations. Her first play, A&E , was set in a hospital waiting room full of drug addicts and wounded criminals in police custody. It had a surreal, comic ambience that counterbalanced the seriousness of its situation. The Slip is different – but every bit as gripping. It’s dark, focused, and mixes everyday emotions with extraordinary violence, like an early Coen Brothers movie. It’s the middle of the night. Four friends driving home f...