The End Of History…
Royal Court Theatre, London

A Holy Show
Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh

(Ab)solution
Greenside, Edinburgh

In the mid 1980s, at a performance of David Edgar’s Maydays, an epic of left-wing European politics, I overheard a theatregoer lament: “Well, this is very different from his last one.” This was hardly Edgar’s fault, as they had previously seen his populist, feel-good RSC adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby.

Playwright Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany face a similar risk of brand confusion. Recently feted for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, such a hot ticket that if the Martians suddenly invade it will be because they want to see it, the pair now reunite at the Royal Court with a show as removed from J.K. Rowling as Maydays was from Dickens.

Inevitably much more in the line of Thorne’s pre-Rowling solo work (Hope, When You Cure Me), The End of History… presents three scenes in the life of a middle-class family, each playing out in 30 minutes of real time, but chronologically widely separated, dropping in on their Berkshire kitchen on 14 November 1997; 2 February 2007; and 1 May 2017.