The Children
Opening Night: December 12, 2017
Closing: February 4, 2018
Theater: Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
Direct from an acclaimed run in London, the powerful Royal Court Theatre production of Lucy Kirkwood’s astonishing new play will make its American debut at MTC with the heralded original cast. In a remote cottage on the lonely British coast, a couple of retired nuclear engineers are living a very quiet life. Outside, the world is in utter chaos following a devastating series of events. When an old friend turns up at their door, they’re shocked to discover the real reason for her visit. The Mail on Sunday calls The Children “beautifully written and superbly acted.” Hailed by The Independent as “the most rewarding dramatist of her generation,” playwright Lucy Kirkwood makes her highly anticipated New York debut. Directing is the award-winning James Macdonald (Top Girls at MTC). The Children stars the original Royal Court Theatre cast: BAFTA Award winner Francesca Annis (BBC’s “Cranford”), two-time Olivier Award nominee Ron Cook (Juno and the Paycock at The Donmar), and Outer Critics Circle Award winner Deborah Findlay (National Theatre’s Stanley).
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December 12, 2017
“How are the children?” shouts a woman standing in a spare, roughly furnished cottage kitchen at the start of Lucy Kirkwood’s potent, aching new play. The woman is still, serious — there’s an almost alien quality about her, as if she’s processing the details of the world of human beings for the first time. She has gray hair with some wave to it, nicely kept, and a finely-featured elfin face that hints at younger days of striking beauty. She’s also bleeding heavily from the nose, and though another woman — more earthy, more energetic — will soon arrive with a washbowl and a rag and a profusion of apologies, the first woman, the alien, will spend the rest of the play with the front of her shirt marked with blood.
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December 12, 2017
And here, from Manhattan Theatre Club via the Royal Court, comes another doomsday play. Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children is a sturdy drama; interesting, arresting, and enigmatic enough to hold interest for its almost two-hour running time. It has crossed the sea intact, importing director James Macdonald, his design team, and his cast of three. All do a fine job, making The Children a worthwhile evening in the theatre. But is worthwhile, one wonders, enough?
READ THE REVIEWDecember 12, 2017
First comes the reunion. Then, the reckoning. So it goes in “The Children,” a slow-moving but ultimately thought-provoking and haunting drama about legacies and how the past always catches up with the present. Playwright Lucy Kirkwood’s setting is England, where a devastating tsunami and nuclear power station disaster have left chaos in their wakes.
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December 12, 2017
Francesca Annis, Ron Cook and Deborah Findlay star in the American premiere of Lucy Kirkwood’s acclaimed drama about the tense reunion of three people who worked together in a nuclear power plant.
A cozy cottage near the coast in rural England provides the setting for the new drama by Lucy Kirkwood, and all you have to do is take one look to know that things are not quite right. Miriam Buether’s set design is askew, tilted just slightly enough to suggest there’s something seriously off about the lives of its inhabitants. As we eventually learn, there’s something seriously off about the play as well. READ THE REVIEW
December 12, 2017
First the earthquake. Then the tsunami. Then the nuclear reactor shuts down when the tidal wave reaches its seaside dome. But not to worry. That’s why they have emergency generators.
In the basement.
Putting emergency generators where floodwaters can quickly render them useless sounds like a design mistake only a polemical (or satirical) playwright would invent. But part of the horror of “The Children,” which opened on Tuesday at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, is that the author, Lucy Kirkwood, did not dream up that part of the plot. Pretty much the same chain of events caused the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan.
READ THE REVIEWDecember 12, 2017
Dystopias have been a cultural staple long before 2017, but the year was still full of them — Blade Runner 2049 and Hulu’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, just to name two. Theater has followed suit, but its offerings have been relatively unique, steering clear of the gloom and creeping dread which tends to define the genre. The back half of the year has featured Zoe Kazan’s smart marital drama After the Blast, which imagines our future existence as being entirely underground; a startlingly graphic if somewhat incoherent staged take on George Orwell’s 1984; and, now, The Children, Lucy Kirkwood’s talky Royal Court transfer, arriving on Broadway to ring out the year in appropriately post-apocalyptic style.
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