Review: Cow | Deer (Royal Court)

Review by Dan Ghigeanu

⭐️⭐️

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to be a heavily pregnant cow? Or imagined the hyper-vigilance of a deer navigating a hostile wilderness? Cow | Deer, now premiering at London’s Royal Court Theatre, dares to ask exactly these questions, throwing away traditional narrative and dialogue in favour of a fully immersive, sonic journey into animal consciousness. Created by Katie Mitchell, Nina Segal, and Melanie Wilson, this is experimental theatre with an uncompromisingly abstract edge.

From its opening moments, Cow | Deer positions itself far from the familiar territory of character and story. Instead, it offers a stripped-back staging, where sound takes the lead role as the primary storytelling tool. There are no spoken lines, no linear plot, and no named characters, only four performers: Pandora Colin, Tom Espiner, Tatenda Matsvai and Ruth Sullivan, generating a complex live soundscape that attempts to break the boundary between human and non-human experience. Its central premise, that we might understand the world from a non-human perspective, is fascinating, but the execution, while at times captivating, often feels frustratingly bland. There are moments of gripping tension, a sudden rustle signals danger, an extended silence is broken by a car revving, a cow’s laboured breathing grows almost unbearable, but they rarely accumulate into a satisfying dramatic arc.

The narrative, such as it is, remains abstract and ambitious. At times, sometimes you sense the presence of a story: the cow’s mounting anxiety as she prepares to give birth, but without clear markers of progression or stakes, the performance risks drifting into monotony. What begins as mesmerising can soon feel like endurance.

Still, there are passages of real beauty. A scene in which the deer seems to melt into the surrounding landscape, is rendered through an extraordinary layering of sound textures and ambient tones that evoke a kind of transcendence. Similarly, the cow’s final moments delivered through a heartbreaking combination of breath, tremor, and silence, land with genuine emotional force. These flashes of clarity hint at the show’s full potential, and what it might have achieved with more variation in pace and tone.

Design-wise, the production leans hard into minimalism. There is no scenery in the traditional sense. Lighting done by Prema Mehta is dim, used mostly to highlight or obscure the performers as they blend into the world they’re evoking. This aesthetic choice allows sound to become the primary dramaturgical force, which works well conceptually but only to a point. The lack of visual or structural variation leaves the piece vulnerable to monotony, particularly when moments of sound intensity are not counterbalanced with clarity or contrast.

The intention behind the work is admirable. In a theatrical landscape that often feels overly verbal and character-driven, Cow | Deer offers something truly different: a reminder that theatre can be a space of the senses. Its goal to challenge human-centric thinking and imagine new types of empathy with non-human life is both urgent and valid, but good ideas alone do not make for compelling theatre. The balance between abstraction and narrative, sound and silence, exploration and coherence, often feels misjudged.

The creative team, Katie Mitchell, Nina Segal, and Melanie Wilson have crafted an experience that is uncompromising in its vision. It is clear that Cow | Deer is not trying to be accessible or entertaining in any traditional sense. This is a production that seeks to disorient, to disturb, and to invite deep listening, and to some extent, it succeeds. Leaving the theatre, there is a strange dissonance between the raw, primal soundscape of the piece and the busyness of the outside world. For a moment, the everyday seems newly alien.

Still, the lingering aftershocks of the experience are not enough to redeem the hour that precedes them. Despite its moments of sonic beauty and its conceptual integrity, Cow | Deer ultimately falls short of delivering on its promise. It is a work that impresses in parts but rarely moves. And in the absence of emotional or narrative momentum, it becomes easier to admire than to truly engage with. Cow | Deer is a theatrical experiment that dares to be different but in its quest to strip away the familiar, it risks shedding too much. What remains is a carefully crafted, but ultimately hollow, sensory ritual that might intrigue some, but will leave many cold.

Cow | Deer plays at Royal Court until 11^th October. Tickets from https://royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/cow-deer/

Photos by Camilla Greenwell