Seven years after his first play, Mojo, was a hit at the Royal Court, Jez Butterworth has written his second. Also staged at the Royal Court, it looks likely to be as successful as his first.
The play is set in the Cambridgeshire fens, which in this production exude a real sense of danger and isolation. The characters in the play have guilty secrets relating to their past, while their futures may be as bleak as the surrounding countryside — unless they can somehow redeem themselves.
The Night Heron has a highly poetic quality that confirms Butterworth as one of our most original playwrights, while his connection with the Royal Court keeps that theatre in the mainstream of worthwhile new writing, a position it has held — with occasional lapses — since the mid 1950's.
—By Paul Webb Theatrenow
