Is Anything Broken?

Monday January 23rd brings us a writer new to us, Dan Davies, but he isn't new to the real world. Indeed, a version of Is Anything Broken? is getting a hearing on Radio Four in the spring. So here's our chance to see the stage version. It's a comedy-drama, set in real time that uses momentum and the stuff of real life to build into a thrilling, pitch-black satire.

Here's the outline:

"Patrick, an architect catching a flight to give a major pitch, is settling down to enjoy a few moments of luxury in the executive lounge when he finds out his son has had an accident at school, a thread that will cause his tightly-stretched life to unravel, at a really inconvenient time.

Patrick and deputy architect Oriane now need every second their plane has been delayed to re-organise his over-complicated work and home life; juggling multiple simultaneous phone calls, the arranging of childcare, marital breakdown, call centre delays, emergency emails, overlapping commitments, and the jealousies and petty power plays between them - they enter a nexus of mind-bending stress. A hadron collider of obligation and commitment requiring ever faster decisions; the 10th circle of hell newly opened for the super-connected of the 21st century.

"Is Anything Broken" is about the fabric of our lives and the sacrifices our jobs demand, often so quickly we barely notice until it is too late. As such, it’s also a dramatic examination of F.Scott Fitzgerald’s suggestion that “action is character”.


Monday, 7.45 at the Phoenix.