In the Republic of Happiness

Absurdist and strangely gripping... Crimp's unhinged structures are potently dreamlike, startlingly comical, and disturbing.

Crimp goes so far as to call it "an entertainment in three parts," and it rocks along like a dystopian vaudeville conceived in an unlikely alliance of Alan Ayckbourn, Harold Pinter and Caryl Churchil . . . The actors are imprisoned and liberated at once, their strange between-worlds condition a source of joy, intemperateness and above all a care for our diversion. Add it all up, I'm not sure what you get. But as it goes by, it's the most tremendous fun for 100 minutes, my favourite play of the year.

If you're looking for something really, truly, alternative to see over the holidays, look no further than the hallucinogenic otherness of Martin Crimp's new drama... This oblique attack on the cult of positive thinking is Crimp taken to the max: hilarious, playful cryptic and maddening.

Brilliantly satirises our contemporary preoccupation with individualism, entitlement, narcissism eternal youth and the notion that restraint is dead and that opinions - no matter how banal - must be stated loud and clear for all the world to hear.