The Shitheads review – primal urges rear up in a playful, prehistoric oddity

2026-02-13 - 15:15

Royal Court Upstairs, London Cave people with very different perspectives meet on an elk hunt in Jack Nicholls’ savage but sweet play about love and violence among early humans Love is expressed with a licked thumb run down a forehead in Jack Nicholls’ dazzlingly unpredictable debut play. Savage and sweet and entirely strange, The Shitheads transports us back tens of thousands of years, to a time when survival required good aim with your hand axe, and squeamishness would not serve you well. Early humans Clare (Jacoba Williams, slippery and wild) and Greg (Jonny Khan, puppyishly excitable) meet on the hunt for an elk (a beautiful raggedy creature designed by Finn Caldwell and captained by Scarlet Wilderink, absolutely alive – until it is not). Never having met anyone like the other, they are both in awe of their opposing perceptions of time and the future, of living and dying. Worthy of a licked thumb. Continue reading...