RED

Writer | Nick Hern Books

Red is a remote boy in a removed land, shredded by his war and his lovers Val and Amy — three people savagely in love. It’s the unseen, the uncontrollable, that is slowly killing them all.

Val and Red call each other mother and son, and fight over the pungent durian fruit with sexual brutality. Amy has missed Red like a hunger, like an insatiable bloodlust. And in the outhouse, someone or something is bleeding to death… violently.

A poetic debut play that trawls around the basis of existence — a refreshingly powerful take on the age-old battle: Love.

‘A tremendous, frightening force-field of a 70-minute drama… straightforward, hard as nails, and yet full of a true sense of tragedy. The final impression is one of some primal sexual horror that will not go away; of women invaded and abused; and of men whose savagery makes them feel strong, but utterly impoverishes them in the end’
★★★★
Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman

‘The language is rich, and colours the play with its flow and rhythm as well as its allusions to classical tragedy’
★★★★
ThreeWeeks

‘Pure animalistic need pulses and throbs throughout Fittock’s chewy text… styled like some undiscovered Greek tragedy’
The Herald

‘What is astonishing about Fittock’s hypnotically poetic script is the freshness which he brings to the Oedipus myth. He uses it to bring a real understanding to the way men think about those they love’
The Stage