Artistic Director Vicky Featherstone is currently directing both shows at the Royal
Court, and both feature people's minds being fractured by paranoia.
X might take us
to the future in the main house but Upstairs
Cyprus Avenue is dominated by
the past, and the sectarian Troubles that have defined Northern Ireland for
centuries. Black comedies don't come much blacker than David Ireland's play about
Eric (Stephen Rea,) an Ulster loyalist who's spent his life fighting the IRA and
hating all Catholics. Now there's a peace in which neither side got everything they
wanted, and he's not sure what the country's identity is or, by extension, his own.
This crisis has been bubbling under the surface until he sees his newborn
granddaughter and becomes convinced that she's actually Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams
in disguise, leading a charge to invade Protestant homes.
