Forty Winks

Synopsis

Don is outside - he can either knock on the door now or walk away with his memories of rejection. But why would Diana remember their tryst on the back row of the local fleapit anyway? From childhood flirtations to adult deception some things come back to haunt us.

Our Review:

4 November 2004

In Stephen Sondheim’s musical Into the Woods, one character sings: “Oh, if life were made of moments,/Even now and then a bad one!/But if life were only moments,/Then you’d never know you had one”. She then goes on to urge: “Let the moment go…./Don’t forget it for a moment, though.”

I was hauntingly reminded of these words while watching Forty Winks, Kevin Elyot’s latest play that is now premiering at the Royal Court. The point about theatre, says Charlie, a budding 31-year-old fictional playwright in the play, is that “it can give you what you can’t actually have”; and Elyot, the playwright who created him, has obsessively re-written the same play again and again about seeking to reclaim those lost but defining moments in life that got away and can’t be had again, from My Night with Reg and Mouth to Mouth (also originally premiered at the Court) to The Day I Stood Still (seen at the National).

“If we could only step b...

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Latest User Review

81.134.81.210) - 3 December 2004:

At 65 minutes this might be a minature, but it's a minature masterpiece. A fascinating story told in four scenes (three short and one long) which are out of sequence. Despite its length, the characters develop fully and the story unravels intriguingly. The design, staging and performances are faultless. I left the theatre feeling more satisfied than many 3-hour epics. Kevin Elyot confirms himself as one of our great new playrights. ...

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