The Pain and the Itch

Synopsis

A cosy family Thanksgiving dinner for six. Someone - or something - is leaving bite marks in the avocados. Clay and Kelly's daughter Kayla has an itch and Carol can't remember who played Ghandi. American writer Bruce Norris takes a withering look at phoney liberal values in this hilarious social satire.

Our Review:

22 June 2007

As a compendium of clichés designed to cause affront among right-thinking lefties, you’d have trouble improving on the rattle bag in Bruce Norris’ dialogue in The Pain and the Itch: a cat has been “euthanised”, a married couple is working on not suppressing emotion, gypsies should be “got rid of” (like the Jews), lip-liner on a little girl panders to “male objectification”.

Norris’ play, which is an abrasive comedy of expository manners at a Thanksgiving dinner, re-enacted for the benefit of a Muslim Somali cab driver whose diabetic wife has died, is the first show directed by Dominic Cooke in his own first season as artistic director. He has done a wonderful job, not least in reminding us of a recently neglected line in smart, liberal anti-liberal American dramaturgy that the Court has always towed, from David Mamet through Wallace Shawn’s Aunt Dan and Lemon to John Guare’s Six Degrees of Separation.

All three of those writer...

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Latest User Review

Erna - 22 January 2008:

Saw the play last summer but didn't get to comment then. I really enjoyed sitting in the audience as an American in London, watching the British act American. It was a fun experience, though the content was largely serious, with interspersed humor. I LOVED the American accents. Also, loved Matthew McFadyen....

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