The Big House, London
A mixture of surrealism and satire renders Maggie Norris’s production both unnerving and puzzling
Covid-19 dramas have kept us afloat during lockdown. There have been online monologues and TV plays on pandemic life while James Graham and David Hare have given us their takes, too. A play that reflects on the experience of the coronavirus crisis at this juncture, when the end is in sight, runs the risk of feeling retrospective.
The Ballad of Corona V takes us through the full cycle of the pandemic in Britain, from the disbelief and denial at its start to the hospital death toll at its apex and the political messaging alongside it. But it is lifted out of a socially-realist setting and infused with black comedy and song. It is the unusual mixture of surrealism and satire that renders it both unnerving and funny in its best moments.
