★★★★★

“an evocative and moving story”

‘Cow | Deer’ is a ground-breaking, haunting exploration of humanity’s impact on nature: a wordless theatrical experience unlike anything you’ve ‘seen’.

As autumn’s chilly fingers take hold, ‘Cow | Deer’ beckons you to spend a summer’s day in the life of two animals – one wild and free, the other domesticated. Created entirely with sound, the deer roams the forest looking for berries and water; the cow is pregnant and preparing for birth. Neither can escape human interference: planes roar overhead, cars screech past, dogs crash through protective barriers; the bucolic idyll is quickly shattered. Then the climax: two heartbreaking fates. Human dominance is clear.

Co-created by Katie Mitchell, Nina Segal and Melanie Wilson, this innovative piece pushes the boundaries of theatre. Though staged, it’s aural with nothing to watch save the Foley artists working their magic. Instead, sound IS the show, perhaps most effectively experienced with closed eyes. Though unlike a radio play, it’s fully immersive, a gravel path greeting your feet, the smell of fresh hay in the air. The sound enfolds you, moving dynamically through the space, approaching and retreating from all sides. You feel every step, every raindrop, every fly bite. Little by little, you slip into cow and deer’s world, feeling every shiver, every breath, as if it were your own. I initially wondered if a day in the life of a cow might be a little dry; but the plot hits hard, channelling a flood of emotions and giving these animals a voice without uttering a single word.

Alex Eales’ design is genius. The stage unassumingly displays the Foley materials on a bed of straw, grass, water and stone, accented by Prema Mehta’s soft lighting. You almost don’t notice the array of technical equipment, microphones and sound booths. Soft lighting remains throughout, allowing you to watch these artists in motion if you wish, but encouraging you to drift away and let your mind create the visuals.

The soundscape design by Tom Espiner, Ruth Sullivan and Marie Zschommler and realisation by Espiner, Pandora Colin, Tatenda Matsvai, Ruth Sullivan and Melanie Wilson, is beautifully rich and realistic, combining real field recordings with deft Foley art. Real bird calls and human sounds mix with trees creaking, streams splashing and hooves stamping. Scene changes are grounded by clear shifts in ambient tone. The range of sounds is phenomenally impressive. This is not simply an emulation of the outdoors; expect screaming jet engines, screeching car tyres, and even whooshing from the inside the cow (come see it, you’ll see what I mean). There are unexpectedly funny moments, like the cow’s thunderous wee and cow pats slapping the ground. It weaves together an evocative and moving story, despite the lack of words and visuals.

The cast and sound engineer work seamlessly together, creating impressively complex sounds through an aural ballet. Every moment requires a skilful coordination of whisking, shaking, squelching and striking, simultaneously using multiple Foley materials. It’s breathtaking to watch and so effectively recreates the natural world I can scarcely believe the rustling leaves are the fringes of a glittery pompom.

‘Cow | Deer’ is a compelling and expressive marriage of technology and art, with an important message about nature under siege. As poignant as it is impressive, I urge you to experience this experimental work and ‘see’ things from a new perspective.

EAST IS SOUTH

Hampstead Theatre

★★★

“The cast is superb and slips through the gears with unruffled confidence”

In his break-out hit House of Cards, writer Beau Willimon peered into the darker culverts of the human soul to assemble Kevin Spacey’s sinister politician Frank Underwood. In the dazzlingly complex East Is South, he stays in the same vicinity but stares fixedly upwards.

He is doing nothing less than searching for God, or her composite parts.

His new play asks whether Agi – the anthropomorphised AI machine – has the necessary attributes to claim the role.

These dense philosophical disquisitions are, mercifully, pinned to a conventional genre plot. Someone has sidestepped protocols and attempted to release Agi into the outside world.

The stage is a soulless interrogation suite in a secret facility. Coders Lena (Kaya Scodelario) and Sasha (Luke Treadaway) are quizzed by diligent NSA agent Samira (Nathalie Armin). Loitering in the shadows is mentor and walking Ted talk Ari Abrams (Cliff Curtis), who is battling his own demons, except he doesn’t believe in such things.

On a two-tier stage, the office above is set aside for the watchers, the agents and the monitors.

Despite Lena’s plaintive denials, there are reasons to suspect her motives. She comes from a strict Mennonite Christian upbringing and her vetting throws up some dubious episodes in her past. Then there’s her relationship with Sasha, a Russian refugee who literally bears the scars of a repressive regime.

Why would they risk everything – freedom, life, intellectual exploration – on a fool’s errand? Another question might be, why deny Agi her manifest destiny?

Under Ellen McDougall’s unobtrusive direction, the interrogation scenes ground a script which, like a toppled firework, has an instinct to shoot off in brilliant tangents. The cross-examinations are tense, revelatory – and comprehensible.

Elsewhere, it feels like an explosion in an encyclopedia factory, with characters picking up random pages and reading aloud. We have an explanation of the Māori Haka, a disquisition on the duality of mind and body, a theory of dark matter, an update on efficient evolution, some rousing Bach deconstruction, an unfortunate incident with a snack bowl and a torrent of other fragmentary pieces that attempt to cohere into a grasp of ineffability, which by nature and definition proves impossible.

Meanwhile agent Olsen (Alec Newman), an amusingly simple soul among a collection of racked consciences, only wants to break fingers and find the truth. While others have multiple descriptors (Māori Jew, Sufi Muslim) he’s just an American, he says, and tired of all the high-falutin’ speechifying.

The cast is superb and slips through the gears with unruffled confidence. Scodelario is nicely unreadable as the idealistic coder, neatly balancing a clear intellectual rigour with a soft and damaged heart. Treadaway is sinuous and sly. Armin gives the thankless role of interrogator depth, while professorial Curtis steals scenes with his nuanced Eeyore ramblings.

They all wear their brilliance lightly. This is just as well, because the heavy-handed approach to the topic threatens to snuff out the guttering candle that is leading us mere mortals through this mazy nether world.

In the end, the posturing longueurs edge out the needs of genre drama such that relationships are rushed and the plot twists are never entirely convincing.

Nevertheless, this is an ambitious and fearless attempt to explore the nature of AI which threatens to revive discussions of the divine just as we in the West have settled for secularity.

What emerges is the irrational need for transcendence and ritual that make us both human and – in Agi’s eyes – unfit for purpose.

COW | DEER

Royal Court

★★★★★

“an evocative and moving story”

COW | DEER

Royal Court

Reviewed on 11th September 2025

by Hannah Bothelton

Photography by Camilla Greenwell

Previously reviewed at this venue:

COW

COW

COW

EAST IS SOUTH

Hampstead Theatre

★★★

“The cast is superb and slips through the gears with unruffled confidence”

EAST IS SOUTH

Hampstead Theatre

Reviewed on 17th February 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Manuel Harlan

Previously reviewed at this venue:

EAST IS SOUTH

EAST IS SOUTH

EAST IS SOUTH

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