You have to hand it to Anne Tipton. This year's winner of the James Menzies-Kitchin Memorial Trust Award, the prize for promising young directors, has got courage. Martin Crimp's coolly European meditation in 17 scenes on a woman, also called Anne - who may be a terrorist on the run, or an artist who has turned her suicide attempts into her art, or a traveller who has her photo taken by millionaires' swimming pools and in slums, or a woman whose children have been slaughtered in civil war, or even a child herself - is not an easy text for any director. And particularly not for one right at the start of her career and without lots of resources.
At the Royal Court in 1997, Crimp's piece of anti-theatre, with its playful games, looked like a manifesto for the future of theatre as well as a chillingly well observed consideration of the soullessness of modern human existence in a consumerist culture. At one point the unseen protagonist is even a shiny new model of an exclusive car, the Anny. Like all the most interesting plays, Attempts on Her Life is a shape-shifter, and now you can see in it the contemporary preoccupation with identity and celebrity. The mysterious Anne may be the figment of a Hollywood scriptwriter's imagination - or simply that of an English playwright.
Without the benefit of a hi-tech production, the piece is less seductive and more irritating. Still, Tipton's production highlights the theatrical knowingness of the piece with its up-tilting spotlights and a style that almost seems like a comic end-of-the-pier revue, without sacrificing any of its sinister undercurrents. It is an effective calling card for Tipton, and if, in retrospect, Crimp's play is not quite as momentous as it first seemed, it is still sufficiently slippery to merit a look.
· Until August 15. Box office: 020-7223 2223.
.jpg?w=600)
