Theatre review Evocative journey into the lives of animals

Down the road from the Royal Court, a building is adorned with the bust of a cow – a reminder that this area of London was once home to grazing dairy cattle and has history as farmland.

- Chris Wiegand

Cow | Deer, an hour-long "experiment in performance", created by the director Katie Mitchell, the writer Nina Segal and the sound artist Melanie Wilson, is a sort of theatrical rewilding as the upstairs stage is given over to a summer's day in the life of a heavily pregnant cow and a young roe deer.

Past productions at the theatre have featured live animals, including half a dozen goats (eponymous stars of Liwaa Yazji's play) and a scene-stealing goose (in Jez Butterworth's The Ferryman). Here, the pair's presence is instead painstakingly felt through myriad foley sound effects and field recordings.