‘astonishingly modern… Corneille springs a surprise I’ve no intention of spoiling… You come out intrigued and entertained, having had the rug pulled neatly from under your feet’
Michael Billington, The Guardian

‘This is a modern interpretation, filled with energy, colour and humour’
The Telegraph

‘undeniably clever’
The Times

‘Performed with aplomb by RADA graduates’
The Independent

‘pulsing with a language that is recognisably Kushner’s own, lyrical and at times luxuriant… delights in its own slipperiness, before in the end springing a nice surprise on us’
Evening Standard

‘Kushner’s freely inventive poetic dialogue is bewitching: vivid in its imagery, baroque in its eloquence… Shanaya Rafaat is electrifying’
The Independent on Sunday

“The art of illusion is the art of love, and the art of love is the blood-red heart of the world”

A lawyer, desperate to find the son he drove away years before, engages the services of a mysterious magician, who conjures up magical visions of the romantic, adventurous and perilous life the lawyer’s son has been living before finally revealing the ultimate truth.

Tony Kushner is one of America’s greatest living playwrights and the famed writer of the Tony award winning Angels in America. His brilliantly adapted play The Illusion is a tender comic tale of passion, regret, love, and magic which shows Kushner at the height his literary powers.

‘More than any other play [The Illusion] presents Mr. Kushner nakedly as a man in love with words, of course, but also with the enchanted, ephemeral theatrical universe that words can conjure.’ The New York Times

The Illusion is performed by a new ensemble of RADA graduate actors

Wednesday, 5 September 2012
Post-show discussion organised by Media and the Inner World in collaboration with RADA

The evening’s performance will be followed by a round table discussion on the psychoanalytic themes emerging from the play. Speakers include Brett Kahr (Psychotherapist), Seb Harcombe (Director), Simon Bayly (University of Roehampton) and Valerie Sinason (Psychotherapist), as well as members of the cast.

MiW brings together academics, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and media figures for a series of discussions about the role of emotion and ideas of therapy in popular culture in the UK.