Lungs (Modern Plays)

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One of the main reasons why this play is so powerful is because MacMillan seems to never tell you how to think, he simply lays facts and ideas on the table for you to assess through the lens of your own morality. The Big and Small Cataclysmic Moments that Shape our Lives A 2011 review in The Washingtonian praised the play as "original and striking", but slighted the characters as "cliche". [12] In her review for The Guardian, Lyn Gardner wrote "Duncan Macmillan's distinctive, off-kilter love story is brutally honest, funny, edgy and current. It gives voice to a generation for whom uncertainty is a way of life through two flawed, but deeply human, people who you don't always like but start to feel you might love. It's bravely written, startlingly structured, and if it loses momentum in the final 30 minutes, Richard Wilson's sharp staging and two outstanding performers, Alistair Cope and Kate O'Flynn, keep it buzzing to the end." [13] Taylor, Paul (2 September 2015). "People, Places and Things, Dorfman, National Theatre, review: Generous-spirited with a strong streak of darkly humane humour". The Independent . Retrieved 20 August 2023. Directed by Matthew Warchus, Claire Foy and Matt Smith perform in Duncan Macmillan’s hilarious emotional rollercoaster of a play about a couple wrestling with life’s biggest dilemmas. Of course, there’s another reason why Matthew Warchus’s Old Vic revival of‘Lungs’ feels particularly zeitgeisty, and that’s a little matter of the casting: this is the next project for erstwhile ‘The Crown’ royal couple Claire Foy and Matt Smith.

I don’t actually know where Margate is but I’m guessing it must be like… past Enfield coz we ain’t got anything like this in my borough or in any of the neighbouring boroughs I’m sure. Their collaborations have been invited to Theatertreffen, Festival D'Avignon and awarded the Nestroy Theatre Prize. They also collaborated on the film Unseen, produced by Warp and Film 4. [15] Kate regularly adapts novels for the stage and works as a dramaturg in the UK and internationally. Kate's first piece of original writing, new musical, Moments, was co-created with Theatre6 Resident Composer Maria Haik Escudero and showcased at Chichester Festival Theatre . That’s why I don’t like being on my own. Whenever I’m on my own I get cornered by some loony who wants to tell me the story of his pesky life. It always happens to me. Always. If there’s a loony out there he’s going to find me. The couple’s principles are put to one side when life takes over. Yet the message of this play is not a cynical one. It is simple a picture of flawed love, set in a flawed planet.

Margaret, late 30s and up, comic.

Right now I am looking at the sea for the first time in my life. He blindfolded me and took me all the way to a beach. Duncan Macmillan’s distinctive, off-kilter love story is brutally honest, funny, edgy and current. It gives voice to a generation for whom uncertainty is a way of life through two flawed, but deeply human, people who you don’t always like but start to feel you might love…bravely written, startlingly structured…” —The Guardian (UK). In Warchus’s uncluttered, in-the-round production of Macmillan’s abruptly time-and-place-skipping play, the only scenery is Rob Howell’s stylised set of solar panels underpinned by quartz crystals. Nonetheless, the first scene is set in an Ikea, where she has an almighty freak out at the prospect of having a child. He remains relatively cool and detached and, well, Matt Smith-ish; she continues to fret, spewing great neurotic screeds about the rights and wrongs of bringing a new life into the world. ‘I’d be giving birth to the Eiffel Tower!’ she splutters, contemplating the 10,000 tonnes of carbon a baby will eventually consume. The split-screen, socially distanced format becomes devastating at times. Subtle additions to the script (‘Why are you standing so far away from me’) only add to the tender presentation of the trauma of miscarriage, and subsequent relationship breakdown. The distance only highlights the ways the couple cannot quite connect, and the performances are at their best when reflecting the difficulties caused not by climate change but the occasionally bleak turns of everyday life. with numerous theatre and dance companies (Ehsan Hemat, La Troupe du Possible, Théâtre Le Public, Cie

Are her worries for real, or just displacement? I think one of the clever things about the play is that it is, in fact, both. The pair’s relationship is clearly under some strain,in a way that relationships are, as they transition from their twenties to their thirties. Kate is based in Bristol, Somerset. She makes magical, visually powerful drama, often with live original music. Kate enjoys telling extraordinary stories about ordinary people in brave and imaginative ways. She founded Theatre6 in 2009, leading the company to win the Evening Standard Award for Best Musical for The Scottsboro Boys in 2014. Two of her shows have been short-listed by Time Out for Fringe Show of the Year.

There’s a lot to consider in this production. The duo affirm they are “good people”. What does that actually mean? Are they the best people to judge themselves to be good? Or are they just affirming and encouraging one another? Amongst the weighing up of the imponderables of modern living is some laugh-out-loud humour. The script and staging are skilled enough to shift from one scene to the next quite instantaneously. Yes, it’s a little contrived, and I’m still in two minds as to whether the last scene really needed to be so ‘final’ – perhaps a more open-ended finish may have been more poignant. But that is more than outweighed by these strong and assured performances. Foy and Smith are superb as the couple whose comfortable ease disguises an empathy shortfall. Smith is the languorous musician who watches on, bemused, after raising the baby question on a trip to Ikea. Foy is the PhD student who foresees a whirligig of vomit, birthday parties and Beatrix Potter. She frantically rewinds through her ancestry and fast-forwards to the child leaving home and hating them. His collaboration with Mitchell led to his meeting Leo Warner, the video designer who directed Macmillan's adaptation of City of Glass in 2017.