Penhall's gruesomely entertaining new comedy … Penhall is onto an absolute winner here, taking an inspired idea and using its inversion of normal biological procedure to breed a fertile mix of existential questions and corporeal, sometimes gross-out humour ... there’s nothing out there that cuts with anything like this double-edged finesse to the heart of how we manage the whole birth business in this country and to the core of vexed issues about who does what in modern relationships.

- Dominic Cavendish, Telegraph

Penhall allows us to put the pieces together as we please. Ninety minutes of entertainment or deceptive think-piece, it’s still a healthy, bouncing bundle.

- Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times

This often hilarious and provocative play is wonderfully fertile, so to speak ... It’s a tribute to Penhall that you sit there wondering why no one has thought of putting it centre stage … Birthday is full of joys

- Paul Taylor, Independent

The birth of their daughter should be one of the happiest days of Ed and Lisa's life. An NHS maternity ward and their somewhat unusual circumstances make for an unsettling and satisfyingly comic sequence of events that tests their relationship to the core, and raises intrinsic questions about the nature of birth and renewal, fear and isolation. Subverting the received gender roles to darkly comic and disturbing effect, the play charts Ed and Lisa's personally fraught experience at the behest of an NHS labour ward. Penhall expertly weaves an acutely funny and emotionally charged sequence of events: he pitches wryly observed gender perceptions of a quite literal life and death situation against an indictment of the NHS system. The beautifully observed writing is at once vicious and searingly tender. Birthday achieves an intensely comic counterpoint to teh visceral domestic drama sutured to bigger issues of aspiration, sacrifice, who we are, how we communicate, the triumph of tolerance, nature and ultimately love.
Les mer
Birthday is a comic and affecting tale that is both intriguing and unsettling. The latest play from Joe Penhall, multi-award winning author of Blue/Orange, Birthday is a well-observed and expertly paced piece of comic writing.
Les mer
Birthday is a comic and affecting tale that is both intriguing and unsettling. The latest play from Joe Penhall, multi-award winning author of Blue/Orange, Birthday is a well-observed and expertly paced piece of comic writing.
Les mer
Published to coincide with the world premiere of the play at the Royal Court Theatre, London.
The Modern Plays series is world famous for containing the work of many of the finest contemporary playwrights. Established in 1959 with the publication of Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey, it remains a series synonymous with the very best in new writing for the stage. Today it features over 1000 plays and continues to grow alongside the staging of new work.
Les mer

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781408172919
Publisert
2012-06-21
Utgiver
Vendor
Methuen Drama
Vekt
100 gr
Høyde
198 mm
Bredde
129 mm
Aldersnivå
G, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
96

Forfatter

Om bidragsyterne

Joe Penhall's latest play Haunted Child opened at the Royal Court in December 2011. Previous plays include his debut Some Voices, which won him the John Whiting Award and which he later adapted for film, premiering at Cannes in 2000, and Dumb Show in 2004. His other credits include Blue/Orange at the National Theatre, which transferred to the West End and for which he received Olivier, Evening Standard and Critics' Circle Awards and Landscape with Weapon at the National Theatre. For film, he most recently adapted The Road by Cormac McCarthy. He also wrote the screenplay for Enduring Love and wrote the BBC2 detective series Moses Jones.