Date: 05/17/2001 Author: Aleks Sierz The domestic arrangement that the middle classes call a “men-age a trois” would be recognised by Sun readers as a simple three-some. In David Spencer’s gruelling new play, Darren, a divorced sixties music fan, moves in with Tina and her disabled teenage son, Ollie. So desperate is she for love [...]
Archives for Press and Reviews
Evening Standard: Glass Hearts
Date: 05/09/2001 Author: Rachel Haliburton A love triangle that makes you wand to scream Davis Spencer’s play starts von territory familiar to Royle Family fans and progresses to the ninth circle of relationshop hell. As the play develops, the circle constricts, drawing the audince into a vortex of romantic delusion and the psychological cancer of [...]
The Times: Land of the living
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 [...]
DAILY MAIL: Killing the cat
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 [...]
The Times: Killing the cat
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 [...]
Listener: Killing the cat
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 [...]
Whats’s On: Killing the cat
Date: Dale Arden Author: 09/05/1990 “Killing the Cat” opens with a fragmented sequence of moments from a family’s history, past and present. Although the links between the fragments at first seem obscure, each moment has perfect emotional clarity. The effect is kaleidoscopic, as little shards of atmosphere, each one razor sharp at the edges, gradually [...]
TIME OUT: Killing the cat
Date: 09/05/1990 Author: James Christopher David Spencer’s award winning play, full of tense, inarticulate aggression, examines the corrosive legacy of sexual abuse as seen through the eyes of a young playwright, Danny, whose almost perverse determination to exhume his working-class family’s murky past rubs abrasively against their wishes. If the main dynamic is Danny’s quest [...]
The Guardian: Space
Date:09/26/1988 Author: Julia Pascal Grown up boys David Spencer’s new play, Space. is a poignant domestic drama set in a Halifax housing estate. Using an almost televisual linear narrative Spencer charts the relationship between Dean, a baker, and Pam, an unmarried mother and barmaid. Through short scenes the playwright builds up the tensions of their [...]
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