Uncomfortable and magical, funny and bitter. It is a northern <i>Under Milk Wood,</i> high on pills and booze
Sunday Times
<i>Road</i> is indeed an original, affecting, rumbustious and truly remarkable piece of work
Financial Times
The writing [is] so immediate and entertaining too. As a first piece of work [it] is absolutely seminal.
Guardian
...Jim Cartwright's 1986 account of a community scarred by unemployment that couldn't be more relevant or rousing...****
- The Guardian,
<i>Road </i>is a hard, occasionally transcendent evening and also a gauntlet to modern playwrights...****
- The Telegraph,
...Cartwright's vivid language, with its ugly-beautiful poetry, its rage and compassion, still grabs you by the heart and throat and squeezes, hard. ****
- The Times,
...its message comes at us with a vengeance.
- The Radio Times,
“Why’s the world so tough? It’s like walking through meat in high heels.”
A road, a wild night; a drunken guide, Scullery, conducts a tour of the derelict Lancashire road on which he lives. In this seminal play that gives expression to the road's poverty-stricken inhabitants, we are taken on a journey from the gutter to the stars and back.
This is published to coincide with the revival of Jim Cartwright’s 1986 game-changing play to the Royal Court, London in June 2017.