‘I’m not angry with you, Zack, I’m angry in general. I’m an artist, that’s my job.’
Ivan is a struggling actor who hasn’t yet achieved the recognition he feels he deserves. But all that is about to change when, one afternoon at the zoo with his friend Zack, he is swallowed whole by a crocodile.
Based on Dostoyevsky’s short story, Tom Basden’s The Crocodile is a ferociously funny, eye-poppingly theatrical play about art, animals and what happens when you try to take on the system from within… a crocodile.
It premiered as part of the 2015 Manchester International Festival, in a co-production with The Invisible Dot.
‘Basden’s witty updating treats Dostoyevsky’s original with a nicely assured mixture of respect and irreverence… this savagely silly satire is entirely infectious’
— Telegraph
‘Tom Basden turns Dostoevsky’s allegory of capitalist inhumanity into a sharp satire on political celebrity in the Twitter age… by turns absurd, charming and subtly sinister’
— The Times
‘A snappy little satire’
— WhatsOnStage
