THE ACID TEST sells out at the Royal Court

Anya Reiss’ new play, THE ACID TEST, has opened at the Royal Court to a sell-out run.

The play follows a group of disillusioned graduates taking their first uncertain steps into adulthood over the course of a wild, drunken night in their flat, in a production directed by Simon Godwin.

It follows on from the success of her debut play, SPUR OF THE MOMENT, which played at the Court last summer and was written when she was just 17.  The play went on to earn her a string of awards, including the Most Promising Playwright Award at the 2010 Evening Standard Awards, Best New Play at the 2010 TMA Awards and Most Promising Playwright at the 2010 Critics' Circle Awards.

What a startlingly fine entertainment this is. It’s one thing for Reiss to be able to render the language, mores and self-dramatising tendencies of her three flat-sharing friends, all in their early twenties. But she is almost as acute and amusing with the foibles of the middle-aged. Even more than in last summer’s debut, Spur of the Moment, she nails the games we all play.

Reiss’s ability to allow competing points of view is startling, and not just for her age.

It’s wonderfully intimate, frequently funny, but not sentimental or showy. The humour, like the sadness, comes from character and situation throughout. That difficult second play? Pah! Anya Reiss makes it look easy.
The Times (Dominic Maxwell)

Anya Reiss more than fulfils the promise she showed last year... it is tighter and more focused than Reiss's first venture into the world of dysfunctional middle-class families... the sharply observant Reiss.
Guardian (Michael Billington)

Since the success last year of her debut, Spur of the Moment, Reiss has been under the microscope: was that brilliantly oppressive portrait of family life a one-off, or is she the significant new voice many were then quick to acclaim?  This 90-minute piece suggests the latter.

It has wit and heart, and much of the dialogue is disconcertingly authentic.  Adept at capturing the cadences of post-adolescent chatter, Reiss also knows how to probe the most raw emotions.
Evening Standard (Henry Hitchings)

Full of humour, acute observation and accurate perception.  The dialogue is as powerful and sharp as a vodka cocktail, and the tensions between generations are excruciatingly convincing.
The Stage (Aleks Sierz)

Reiss clearly has a future.
Whatsonstage (Michael Coveney)

THE ACID TEST will run in the Upstairs Theatre until 11th June and is published by Oberon Books.
Photo: Tony Buckingham