The Shitheads at Royal Court Theatre Review
Photo: Camilla Greenwell
Written by Liam Arnold for Theatre & Tonic
Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in exchange for an honest review
I wasn’t expecting to be this entertained by cannibalism.
Jack Nicholls’ debut, The Shitheads, is set in a cave tens of thousands of years ago. There are skulls in the walls, bones hanging from the ceiling, and a family who believes the only reliable truth is what’s “between your teeth”. And yet, within minutes, it feels less like a history lesson and more like a wickedly funny mirror held up to now.
The first jolt comes with the elk. A vast, ragged puppet (designed by Finn Caldwell) lumbers across the stage, alive with eerie grace. Clare — played with thrilling physical assurance by Jacoba Williams — hunts it alongside Greg (Jonny Khan, endearingly eager). The sequence is genuinely breathtaking, one of those moments where you feel the audience lean forward in collective awe. It’s brutal, beautiful and absurd all at once. A statement of intent.
Then Clare kills Greg.
That act — shocking but oddly matter-of-fact — sets the tone. Violence here isn’t exceptional; it’s domestic. It sits alongside sisterly teasing and daughterly devotion. Clare returns to the cave she shares with her domineering father Adrian (Peter Clements, by turns blustering and tragic) and her younger sister Lisa (Annabel Smith, a feral comic delight). They tidy away skull-bowls before visitors arrive. They argue about stories. They cling to the belief that the “shitheads” outside — outsiders, nomads, strangers — are lesser beings.
The genius of Nicholls’ writing is that it never feels like a lecture, even when the parallels to modern tribalism are glaring. Climate dread hums in the background. Borders — physical and ideological — matter deeply. Stories shape reality. The language is modern, punchy and sometimes childlike, which makes the ideological rigidity all the more unsettling. These aren’t grunting cavemen; they’re us.
Anna Reid’s set leans into that idea with wit. The cave walls are daubed with red markings and strung with bones, but there are also rugs and standing lamps. It looks like a prehistoric sitcom set designed by someone with a very dark sense of humour. The effect shouldn’t work. It absolutely does.
When Greg’s widow Danielle (Ami Tredrea, calm and watchful) arrives with her puppet baby, the tone shifts again. The baby — beautifully handled — becomes the emotional centre of the piece. Suddenly the question isn’t just who survives, but whose story survives. Empathy begins to seep in where dogma once ruled. And that’s when things become dangerous.
If I have a reservation, it’s that the final stretch loses some of the early momentum. The first half crackles with invention and menace; later scenes feel slightly more deliberate, themes pressed a touch too firmly. A leaner edit might have sharpened the impact. But even when it threatens to over-explain itself, the production remains theatrically bold.
What lingers isn’t just the gore or the gags (though there are plenty of both). It’s the uneasy recognition. The way fear of the other is taught. The way love and violence blur. The way stories harden into truth.
Upstairs at the Royal Court is exactly where a play like this should be: risky, strange, ambitious. The Shitheads doesn’t feel polite or polished. It feels alive. And I’d much rather spend an evening in a cave with something that takes big swings than in safe territory with something that doesn’t.
️️️️️ ★★★★