Cul-De-Sac

115270 original

Tim Peterson may be a new arrival in the cul-de-sac, but it's not long before his new home starts to seem a little strange – not least because of the mysterious Tony across the road, a man whose influence seems to run very, very deep. There's something rotten in the cul-de-sac, something very rotten indeed.

Blending George Orwell's magnum opus Nineteen Eighty-Four with a hint of The Stepford Wives and set in the heart of Middle England, Cul-De-Sac is the first production to come out of the Comedians' Theatre Company's new writing unit, Itch: A Scratch Event. 

What begins as an examination of the petty-mindedness of the suburban bourgeoisie quickly becomes darker and darker as Tony is revealed to be a frighteningly omnipotent and powerful presence in the cul-de-sac. Yet it's Toby Longworth's sinister doctor—Tony's head spy and torturer-in-chief—who does his dirty work. Indeed, as Tim's raging against the machine lands him in the cul-de-sac's equivalent of Room 101, it is Longworth who is brought in to break his spirit. Certainly there are echoes here of Winston Smith giving up the ghost amid cries of "I love Big Brother!"

This is a play executed with great humour, intelligence and a lightness of touch that belies the very dark undercurrent running beneath the surface. Exploring such an ambitious topic as the corrupting effect of totalitarianism in such a small setting is achieved with effortless ease in this portrait of suburban dystopia. Cul-De-Sac is yet another rock solid production from the increasingly bankable Comedians' Theatre Company.