[Blank] - Donmar Warehouse - ★★★★ - Until November 30, 2019


[Blank] looks at women and their families who are living with abuse, poverty and addiction. They are the voiceless who are on the receiving end of society's systems: social work, foster care, prison. The portrait we are given of these women's and their children's vulnerability and their inarticulate pain is quite emotionally harrowing. In fact, their lives are prisons whether they are actually incarcerated or not, and they seem without the tools to break free. The next picture we are shown is of the women who have a voice and who comprise the system: the police, the lawyers, the educators etc. Despite all their well meaning and apparently expert efforts it becomes clear that their self-satisfied, incomprehension of how they are failing will not break the cycle of victimisation. They are also trapped by their pre-conceptions and their class. This is a play that makes us deeply question the structures and systems we so often blindly rely on to hear the hopeless and to mend the broken. Alice Birch has written an important work that is extremely well acted by a disciplined and wonderfully interdependent cast. They float seamlessly from character to character, but the audience is never unclear about the unraveling narrative. Maria Aberg's direction is flawless. The Donmar Warehouse gives us another cutting edge piece of work and another first-class production.

 Reviewed by J.C.

  Our Score:  ☆☆☆☆ 

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 WHEN, WHERE, GETTING THERE:
Until November 30, 2019.
Mon - Sat: 7:30 pm, Thu & Sat: 2:30 pm
Nearest tube: Covent Garden
https://www.donmarwarehouse.com/production/7193/blank/
Map & Location: 41 Earlham St, Seven Dials, London WC2H 9LX, UK

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