Complicité produce new radio play by Anne Carson for The Paris Review

4 Mar 2026

Today marks the release of I Don’t Do Innocents; a new Complicité production directed by Simon McBurney for The Paris Review, of Anne Carson’s one-act radio play which was originally published in the Autumn 2025 issue of the literary magazine.

I Don’t Do Innocents is available to listen to here, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your audio.

I Don’t Do Innocents takes place during a family wedding party from which the bride is notably absent, and follows Asta, the bride’s younger sister, as she eavesdrops from the roof through a drainpipe.

Directed by and starring Complicité Co-founder and Artistic Director Simon McBurney, the cast also includes fellow Complicité Co-founder Annabel Arden and frequent Complicité collaborators: Thomas Arnold, Tamzin Griffin, Richard Katz and Sarah Slimani. New to Complicité are actors Emma Corrin (Nosferatu, Black Mirror) and Finn Deutsch Kelly.

Anne Carson’s unique, poetic works that transcend genre and resist easy categorisation have long been a source of inspiration for Complicité; Nox was a key text in the process of making the third work, ‘Requiem’, in the Figures in Extinction trilogy (a co-creation with Crystal Pite and co-produced by Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT)).

And in 2024, we worked with the London Review of Books to produce an event to celebrate the release of Carson’s Wrong Norma which featured Carson herself, Simon McBurney, her ‘Randomiser’ Robert Currie and actor Ben Whishaw. Watch now

Alongside the deepening of the company’s collaboration with Anne Carson, this commission marks Complicité’s first production with The Paris Review and represents an important extension of our work into high-profile audio production (following on from the success of our audio dramatisation of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising for the BBC World Service), reaching new audiences internationally.

Simon McBurney, Complicité Artistic Director and Co-founder said: “In I Don’t Do Innocents, Anne Carson’s scholarly deadpan ruthlessly excavates the absurdity at the heart of the language of weddings. Written with her characteristic precision and compression, the piece feels like a miniature Greek tragedy. But one in which the erudite, dry and somewhat mischievous author has suddenly decided to write absurd jokes inside a meditation on violence, grief and the unknowable constellation of people we call ‘family’”.

I Don’t Do Innocents

Written by Anne Carson.

Directed by Simon McBurney.

Sound Design by Benjamin Grant.

Music composed by Josh Sneesby.

Produced by Tim Bell with Rima Dodd, a Complicité production for The Paris Review.

Company: Thomas Arnold, Annabel Arden, Emma Corrin, Tamzin Griffin, Richard Katz, Finn Deutsch Kelly, Simon McBurney and Sarah Slimani.

Stage directions read by Anne Carson.