Rehearsal photos by Alex Brenner
GREAT APES
"[Great Apes] boasts real intervention and swagger, from the way that the casdt a turned into bandy-legged apes to the puppet children who haunt the stage like little ghosts"
- The Guardian
"I found the small parts with puppetry - Simon is plagued by a child-like apparition - really quite haunting"
- Time Out
When Turner Prize-winning artist Simon Dykes wakes up one morning after a wild night out, he finds his world has changed beyond recognition. His girlfriend, Sarah, has turned into a chimpanzee. And to his horror, so has everyone else. Immediately rushed to hospital, Simon is taken into the care of charismatic radical psychiatrist Zack Busner and treated for being under the psychotic delusion that he’s human.
Great Apes is Will Self’s hilarious, disturbing and dazzlingly original take on man’s place in the evolutionary chain.
This raucous new stage adaptation from Patrick Marmion (The Divided Laing) mixes razor-sharp language with movement and puppetry, journeying into the mystery of what it means to be a human being.
Puppet by Maia Kirkman-Richards
Great Apes will play at the Arcola in London from 14th March - 21st April.