In this Utopian meets historical retelling of our past, The Sh*theads at the Royal Court Theatre does not hold back its mercy on bringing the intensity of love, violence and a willingness to live to the audience.

Looking back on early man, the debut from Jack Nicholls looks at how we began, grew, the nature of survival and the core feelings and emotions of human beings. At a state where the world is changing, we assume, for an ice age, a family fight for their survival, fearing the dangers of the world through story telling and belief without any other influence. When someone outside of their family unit joins, it pushes them to the reveal the lies about their way of life and soon the love becomes hatred and violence.

Our stage is kitted out, just like we would expect from early man – a cave with red painting on the wall of it, depicting hunting of animals by humans, with a small staircase of rock and hole at the top shining in light. The set changes little but when we move from the outside, in, to show the development of the family to the “others” (or, Sh*theads as they are known), this becomes a little more sophisticated; a standing lamp, chandelier made from bones, carpets put out – along with the animal print clothing that borders on modern, there’s a unique modernist yet dystopian feeling to this view of the past.

All the characters are larger than life and, while not a “stereotype”, they do lean into a certain differing character; the father is a eccentric man, ageing and a life long injury, the youngest daughter is bubbly and bouncy, with no filter, like most toddlers and Clare, the oldest daughter, while bordering psychotic, is strangely often the leader and voice of reason. The Sh*theads are also well rounded and different characters – a slightly simpler man, almost excitable as a child and his partner who is inquisitive and in her own right pretty fierce. The different dynamics work well, particularly when all descends into chaos.

My favourite part of this production has to be the puppetry. This is in the guise of the Sh*thead’s baby – evoking similarities to a smaller version of Little Amal, with effective and lifelike movement and voice and later a young doe eating grass. However, our first impression of the whole production is a huge, life-like Elk. Similar to War Horse, puppeteers envelope themselves within the structure and you forget that this is not a real animal. It is beautiful and yet made with a raggety-ness to it that feels homemade yet highly professional. It makes the circumstances it falls into all the more emotional.

The Sh*theads is a great production. It is beautiful aesthetically, with well thought out characters and an interesting story-line. However, while I cannot quite pick out what it was, it felt a little like the shining element to make it an outstanding piece of theatre was missing. Enjoyable none the less and worth watching despite it missing that little piece of the puzzle.