THE NEW REAL

About the show

In a faraway country, a ferocious election is about to be fought, and it's hard to tell what's real and what's fake ‘So here’s the offer. To run a highly ethical campaign for a candidate you really can believe in, actually. In a place that needs you. Now.’ It’s the 2000s. We’re in a faraway country. Rachel, a stellar American political strategist, and Caro, her British data whizz, have been hired to fight a ferocious election, in a place where it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s fake. They think they’re here to teach the Eastern Europeans how to do democracy, but it turns out they’re here to learn. And when Rachel’s former political partner Larry rocks up on the rival side, their showdown threatens to change global politics, from Warsaw to Wisconsin. Forever. At a time of epoch-changing elections on both sides of the Atlantic, Holly Race Roughan (Artistic Director of Headlong) directed The New Real, David Edgar’s epic, panoramic play about how the political fault-line was redrawn, in his tenth play for the RSC. The New Real premiered in October 2024 and was performed in traverse in the newly re-configured auditorium of The Other Place, with the audience sat on either side of the stage.