Brave New World

I don't want comfort. I want danger. I want freedom. I want sin. Read more …

Aldous Huxley's ground-breaking novel, bursts into life on stage in a world premiere adaptation first ever stage adaptation by award-winning playwright Dawn King, directed byJames Dacre with original music by These New Puritans.

Welcome to the future, where a genetically engineered class system has finally brought order and stability to the world.

This 'Brave New World' has no family, religion or war. Lust and pleasure have replaced love and art. People are safe, healthy and not afraid of death. They get what they want, and they never want what they can't have. Everyone is happy now.

When this stability is threatened, one young woman learns the pain of love and one young man gives in to the love of pain.

Join us on an emotional rollercoaster journey into a future which sheds a blazing light on the present.

The critical consensus

As a result, you never quite feel the sting of this dystopia and Huxley's vision of the future never horrifies. Instead, it seems more like a satire on our present reality – a wry ‘look how things turned out.' At a time when we're handing our civil liberties over quite willingly, Brave New World should be more than that. It ought to appal.

(*) (*) Matt Trueman, WhatsOnStage, 09/09/2015

Harrowing story of an anti-tragic utopia is heartily recommended.

(*) Paul Taylor, The Independent, 09/09/2015

It’s always watchable, but there’s something far more theatrically plodding about director James Dacre and adaptor Dawn King’s version.

(*) (*) Lyn Gardner, The Guardian, 09/09/2015

Melodrama and anticlimax weaken an often dazzling adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s futuristic classic.

(*) (*) Clare Brennan, The Observer, 13/09/2015

The familiar combination of physical theatre montages, exposition-heavy interludes and fragmented episodes make this a workmanlike rather than an inspiring re-imagining of a classic and philosophical novel.

(*) (*) Gareth K Vile, The List, 21/09/2015

This is a piece that lingers, long after the curtain has come down.

(*) Isabella Fraser, Edinburgh Spotlight, 29/09/2015

Energy and fidelity to the intriguing source material are not enough to distinguish Brave New World at the King’s, in a touring production marred by odd choices and a curious lack of life.

(*) (*) Hugh Simpson, All Edinburgh Theatre, 30/09/2015

A slickly realised if bleakly desolate affair that suggests people power has already been tranquilised into submission.

(*) Neil Cooper, Coffee-Table Notes, 01/10/2015

King (with Dawson) creates a faithful reconstruction; a vivid display of set and video, aurally striking and disorientating, the production has the potential to be incredible, it just isn’t there yet.

(*) (*) Dominic Corr, The Reviews Hub, 01/10/2015

The novel is full of ideas and clever allusions to a future world that must have once seemed improbably lunatic, yet a worrying number of Huxley’s predictions have come to pass.

(*) Ken Wilson, TVBomb, 30/09/2015