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| Tom Piggot Smith in King Charles III |
When this hit first arrived at the Almeida, I was extremely disappointed not to get a ticket. Therefore, I was delighted to get tickets at yet another transfer to the West End for the company.
And I could not have picked a better time to see it. I can not think of a more relevant play than this, immediately after the Scottish referendum and the talk of devolution still strong in the mind, this play directly addresses this question in a dystopian future about the death of our current monarch and the chaos that ensues. It is one of the best written plays to come out of England in the last 20- 30 years with Mike Bartlett giving us perhaps the strongest pieces of verse since Shakespeare. This, in turn, is acted with brilliant performances from Piggot Smith and Oliver Chris, last seen in Great Britain at the National. Actually, King Charles III makes a very strong double billing with Bean's new comedy, recently transferred to Theatre Royal Haymarket. It both picks up on similar themes and takes them in very different directions. Great Britain talks about the press and their role in privacy whereas, in Bartlett's play, freedom of the press is a very prominent theme. It also is great fun. The audience laughed at the snide comments and in jokes about the royalty. This play, in my opinion, is a play that will be showcased for years and years as some of Britain's greatest pieces alongside Shakespeare's Hamlet and Bennet's The History Boys. If you want to see great writing on show, this is the show for you.
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| Oliver Chris and Lydia Wilson in Kind Charles III |
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