Blue/Orange

Description

You'll never keep me locked up, white man. This is one nigga you don't get to keep, white man. Cos I'm gonna bark every time you come near. D'you understand? Christopher has been confined to a psychiatric ward for a month. He wants out. The problem is he still thinks oranges are blue. His doctor, convinced he needs help, wants to section him. The senior consultant thinks it's all a question of culture: at home in Shepherd's Bush, Christopher will be amongst 'people who think just like him'. And besides, it costs taxpayer money to keep Christopher in care. Race, ethics, sanity and prejudice collide in Joe Penhall's exquisitely sharp 'state-of-the-nation' classic. Blue/Orange was first performed at the Cottesloe Theatre, National Theatre, in April 2000. This edition has been published to coincide with the Young Vic's revival production in 2016.

Joe Penhall's plays include Some Voices (1994); Pale Horse (1995); In Love and Understanding (1997); The Bullet (1998), Blue/Orange (2000 - Evening Standard Best Play Award, the Critics' Circle Award for Best New Play and the 2001 Olivier Award for Best New Play), Haunted Child (2011), Birthday (2012) and Sunny Afternoon (2014).

Besides interrogating the very idea of madness, Blue/Orange explores the connection between ethnicity and perceptions of mental health . . . With a real deftness of touch, the play probes notions of authority. It illuminates the way psychiatry can be strategic - and anatomises the politics of medical care. * Evening Standard * Operating as a play of ideas, it unleashes raw emotion on all sides, exposing layers of male egotism and neurosis * Daily Telegraph * Exuberant . . . Penhall has the gift of making serious points in a comic manner and of conveying moral indignation without preaching . . . Stinging satire * Guardian * Funny and irreverent . . . Penhall's writing is vibrant throughout * Independent on Sunday *