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Seren Books
ISBN
1-85411-266-X
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(Extract) Lucy Gough's dreams are of another time and place. "This is not a naturalistic play," she warns in the introduction to Our Lady of Shadows. In fact, Lucy Gough's world is as refreshingly distant from naturalism as one could imagine. Two of the plays - Our Lady and Head - were first commissioned as radio dramas, and they share a love of intimate sound. Head, a clever reworking of Keats's Isabella, includes some mordant asides. When Isabella's lover Enzo returns to life as a talking head, he ends up in the kitchen fridge. Thus the wonderful director's note: "The fridge has started to make chattering noises."
In its final scene, Crossing the Bar achieves a powerful epiphany. It would be unfair to give the game away, but one can merely say that in death the characters find a reason for life. Gough's attention to sound is also evident here. Act Two is prefaced by strict instructions on the "soundscape" which has to be achieved: "It starts as a surreal sound which could be many things: the sea, prison sounds...," she writes.
Lucy Gough has created a visual and aural world that is recognisably her own.
©Peter Morgan 2000 , appears in full Planet magazine August/September 2000
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Methuen
ISBN
0-413-77581-X
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In By A Thread, a young couple seeking to escape the horrific reality of an apocalyptic war encounter in their retreat a young soldier still carrying the head of a lost friend and an old woman waiting to die. Set against the barren mountainside where the two young people must struggle both to survive and understand each other, the play powerfully explores the immediate experience of adolescent insecurity and issues of responsibility, love, jealousy and death.
The Raft - originally produced by BBC Radio 4 – offers a moving and daring exploration of a young mother’s struggle to survive the desolation of prison and separation from her son. Cutting between the four walls of the prison suicide cell and a metaphorical sea of despair, this modern tragedy intimately relates a teenage mother’s last desperate attempt to reclaim her life and to resurface from despair.
The two plays offer a variety of challenges for young actors and will provoke lively discussion of a number of issues.
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