Bourgeoisie bashing

The Pain and the Itch – Royal Court / Small Miracle -Tricycle / The Last Confession -Haymarket

The Pain and the Itch Royal Court Small Miracle Tricycle The Last Confession Haymarket Class warfare is at its most vicious and exhilarating when it occurs within classes rather than between them. Just as feminism is a conspiracy by women against women, so liberalism sets different sections of the bourgeoisie against each other. Bruce Norris’s sharp, entertaining and not quite perfect satire The Pain and The Itch dramatises these faultlines. Two couples represent both sides of the divide. Clay and Kelly are likeable, sanctimonious Democrats whose eagerness to treat everyone sensitively is afflicted by curious blind spots. Clay’s brother Cash is a rich, cynical plastic surgeon whose commie-bashing Czech girlfriend is less than half his age. They lock horns at a Thanksgiving dinner where Norris’s barbed dialogue glitters with hostility. Here’s Cash (a hilarious lazy-voiced performance by Peter Sullivan) as he sums up the liberal dilemma.