David Harrower

If you don't know his work, Joe is the great director, to my mind, of new plays in American theater.

David Harrower's Blackbird, The Vagina Monologues, Take Me Out, uh, Stephen Karam's The Humans, uh, Little Bearage Road, which was on Broadway just before our show was, uh, also starring Laurie Metcalf, Joe's great collaborator of recent years.

Anyway, look, he's also the man behind the cultural juggernaut that is Wicked in all its manifestations.

Oh, something I should quickly explain before I bring in Joe.

Exactly.

Swapping him out for David Harrower right ahead of its highly anticipated second season.

And this single transition, it's just a phenomenal case study.

Like, it gives us a perfect microcosm of modern media dynamics.

No, you definitely don't put out a help wanted ad for a new showrunner on LinkedIn.

Definitely not.

Enter David Harrower.

He is taking over as the new lead writer for The Day of the Jackal season two.

But what was his last London stage appearance at the Criterion in 2006?

Was it A, Otherwise Engaged by Simon Gray, B, Blackbird by David Harrower, or C, The Coast of Utopia by Tom Stoppard?

Right, our first review means we get to sound the obligatory Ava Pickett klaxon early this season.

We couldn't stop talking about her smash hit 1536 all of last season, and Nancy and I both also loved her shrewd updating of Emma at the Rose.

Um, and I saw, and that was 100% from seeing a show.

I saw, um, Black Bird, which is by David Harrower, and it was in the West End.

I hadn't booked it.

I'd been taken on a date.