Writer: Jack Nicholls
Directors: Aneesha Srinivasan and David Byrne
The Shitheads is an exhilarating debut play about our innate humanity and how the stories we tell become the reality we live. In a world that evokes the film Straw Dogs, it’s a disturbing look at how quickly we turn on others and ourselves. With many moments of humour, underneath this playful production, a feeling of sadness lingers: How did we end up here?
In prehistoric Britain, Adrian (an eminently watchable Peter Clements) lives an isolated life with his two daughters. They are a lucky family: “We’re not shitheads”, he assures them, “because, unlike anyone else, we live in a cave”. When his eldest Claire (Jacoba Williams) meets Greg (Jonny Kahn), this shithead is not what she has been told to expect: “It’s not nasty, just the word for people like you”.
Claire teaches Greg how to kill enormous wild beasts. For fun. Not much older than Claire, the 20-something Greg is excitable and wild in energy. Kahn constantly moving around the enormous dying beast. “I’m so happy! Woo-HOOOOO”! Williams’s Claire is grounded and more thoughtful, but delights in Greg’s stories of rotting, decayed hippos. These scenes are curious, a little uncomfortable. And then follows a casual violence. This sets the tone for the rest of the charged production.
An established poet, Jack Nicholls understands his craft, building his play’s rhythm with short lines of dialogue, colloquial speech and vivid imagery. Co-directors Aneesha Srinivasan and David Byrne follow Nicholls’s lead in the intimate Jerwood theatre, subtly creating space for his story to unfold. Beautiful puppetry and Anna Reid’s clever design suggest a world off kilter.
Indeed, this is a play that celebrates storytelling. From the opening moments, your attention is gripped as a majestic animal charges the stage. It takes three puppeteers to navigate. Wounded from the hunt, her guttural grunts and shrieks of pain are unbearable, and pitch-perfect from Puppet Captain Scarlet Wilderink.
When Greg’s wife Danielle (Ami Tredrea) and the baby arrive in search of shelter, they disrupt Adrian’s secluded world, leading to horrible events that descend into the bizarre. Inside Reid’s claustrophobic cave, with a jagged entrance high up on the back wall, fragments of frayed clothing suggest a time not too far from our own. A wooden chair, the cushioned footrest. Chandeliers of human skulls hang over the fire pit. That floor lamp appears to be working.
A dark, imposing crack dominates the cave. It hides what Danielle must not see. Off stage, we hear Asaf Zohar’s composition of pouring rain and sudden deep rumblings. The noise is ambiguous. Indistinguishable. There is little sense of what’s happening, but we are told that the world outside is falling apart. “The country’s dying. The weather’s killing it again”.
Adrian sits in stillness. A brooding presence with full beard, Clements observes events with an intense stare. It’s unnerving, especially when he looks straight into the audience. He is an imposing figure but vulnerable. He might be hiding something, and he is trapped by his stories. He cannot live without a world he thinks exists and will keep it alive at everyone’s expense. Yet there is kindness, too. Adrian clearly loves his children as he teases his youngest Lisa (Annabel Smith’s innocence is heartbreaking). He just wants to keep his family safe.
Tens of thousands of years ago, the world was not much different to today. Our ability for storytelling is powerful. So too is our innate need to nurture and love. But the instinct to kill, protect and to survive is hiding inside that cave’s daunting crack. As the baby looks to us at one point: what are we going to do?
Runs until 14 March 2026
