The Cut (play)
Encyclopedia
The Cut is a 2006 theatre play
Play (theatre)
A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...

 by Mark Ravenhill
Mark Ravenhill
Mark Ravenhill is an English playwright, actor and journalist.His most famous plays include Shopping and Fucking , Some Explicit Polaroids and Mother Clap's Molly House . He made his acting debut in his monologue Product, at the 2005 Edinburgh Festival Fringe...

. It is a dystopia
Dystopia
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...

 that relates the life of Paul, a practitioner of a mysterious operation who is greatly disturbed by its practice. Main themes touch upon one's place in the society and the arbitrariness of governments policies which set up the norm against one's morale.

Plot summary

As the play unravels, the cut is presented as a painful, immoral, controversial and ambiguous surgery, that cures a patient or victim from desire, or maybe even personality. It is apparently destined to dissidents and/or sick people but its virtues also make it attractive as a mean of freedom and salvation. The cut is pictured as a death of some sort, but leaving open to interpretation what part of the patient is dying.

In the first part, Paul is reluctant to administrate the cut to a willing patient, and in the course of his frustrations and failure to convince him otherwise, let explode his angst and impotency to commit suicide, confessing in particular his deficient relationship with his wife. In the second part, Paul is shown in the context that seems to put the most strain on him: his family life. We see him waiting for and having dinner with his wife, from whom he his holding secret—out of guilt—the real nature of his activities for the government. The two have a conversation that progresses from chit-chat to a maddening and humiliating confrontation. In the last part, Paul is in jail as a result of the cut being banished from a new Government, and is visited by his son, with whom he shares an equally emotionally disturbed and alienated conversation.

External links

  • A review by Mark Cook of the representation at the Donmar Warehouse
    Donmar Warehouse
    Donmar Warehouse is a small not-for-profit theatre in the Covent Garden area of London, with a capacity of 251.-About:Under the artistic leadership of Michael Grandage, the theatre has presented some of London’s most memorable award-winning theatrical experiences, as well as garnered critical...

    .
  • A review by Michael Billington for The Guardian
    The Guardian
    The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

    of the same representation.
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