Instant Enlightenment Including VAT (1981)

Mile End Road
23 Sep - 17 Oct 1981
  • by Andrew Carr

“Seen originally on television (starring Simon Callow), Andrew Carr’s Instant Enlightenment Including VAT is an intriguing expose of one of those ‘courses’, inevitably American in origin, which claim to alter one’s life for the better. The financial cost of this one, called Kasna, is substantial, the mental cost is likely to be more, for the participants are subjected to a non-stop fusillade of verbal abuse from the leader and when this softening up process is completed – most of the participants being either too scared or ashamed to ask for their money back – the now-cowed assembly are willing to spill the beans about their problems, presumably without considering that they could have done the same things free of charge to a priest, psychiatrist or social worker.”
Peter Hepple, The Stage, 1 October 1981

You can access the script of this play via the British Library’s MPS Modern Playscripts Collection.

Reviews

Cast List

  • Ralph Bates
  • Robin Halstead
  • Peter Hughes
  • Amanda Kirby
  • Howard Lew Lewis

Creative Team

  • Nick Hamm Director
  • Mandy Dymond Designer