David Spencer

Commission: Royal Court Theater Upstairs

On Stage: Royal National Theater Studio Published by Methuen, Sept. 1994

Date: 09/15/1993 Author: Kate Bassett Kitchen sink, sinking kitsch On one level David Spencer’s new play is a kitchen sink situation. Two sisters, Karen and Frances wash up, talk about the crud an telly and get drunk an a carton of plonk. Indeed, Land of the Living, looks, in brief flashes, like a television soap [...]

Press and Reviews: The Times On Stage: Royal Court Upstairs

Royal National Theater Studio Workshop Production.

Date: 09/13/1990 Author: Georgina Brown David Spencer’s Killing the Cat explores the repercussions for a working-class family when the son writes a novel exposing his father’s sexual abuse of his daughter. It is Spencer’s second winner of the Verity Bargate Award for new writers and an exceptional piece – dense, demanding and boldly conceived, and [...]

Killing the Cat is a play about memory and writing. Moving between the 70s and the present day it shows Danny writing about his sister’s experience of sexual abuse by his father. As he invents a fiction of what he has been told has happened, what he remembers happening and what he imagines or dreams [...]

Date: 09/19/1990 Author: John Marriot Focus on a family at war Blessed by David Spencer’s lean script which ensures that anger bounces off the walls of this tiny venue with full force, this impressive piece links family break-up to social unrest, and provides meaty roles for an excellent cast. Centering on the uneasy introspection of [...]

Date: 08/31/1990 Author: Harry Eyres David Spencer has written a play about the noxious effects of child abuse, which is notable for the absence of campaigning rhetoric and accusing fingers, and in which the social services are never mentioned. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he is concerned with the breakdown of [...]

Date: 09/08/1990 Author: Matt Wolf What increasingly seems to be the Royal Court’s house style – short, sharp plays written in jagged, non-naturalistic stabs – is reinvigorated in David Spencer’s “Killing the Cat” (Theatre Upstairs), the Soho Theatre Company offering that won this year’s Verity Bargate award. Spencer lives in Berlin, but his play returns [...]