Attempts On Her Life

Synopsis

Martin Crimp's '17 scenarios for the theatre', shocking and hilarious by turns, are a roller-coaster of late 20th century obsessions. From pornography and ethnic violence, to terrorism and unprotected sex, its strange array of nameless characters attempt to invent the perfect story to encapsulate our time.

Our Review:

15 March 2007

Martin Crimp’s Attempts on her Life is no less intriguing than it was ten years ago at the Royal Court. But Katie Mitchell’s revival in the NT Lyttelton elevates it into something else: a brilliant, updated (with instant video replay, projections, microphones and music) application of Brecht’s alienation effect in considering the slippery identity of an all-purpose 1990s woman.

Over seventeen sharp and information-packed scenes enacted by a cast of eleven wearing black, we learn that Anne is a suicidal artist, a porn star, an urban terrorist (more Bader Meinhof than religious fanatic), a girl next door who went off with a married man, a charity worker, a grieving mother carrying the limbs of her children in a bag, and a symbolic object of consumerist desire, a sleek and sexy sports car.

The title implies both the impossibility of pinning anyone down and the various strategies of the subject designed to finish things off. As in Mark Ravenhill’s recen...

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Latest User Review

James - 8 May 2007:

It's a shame that those who enjoyed and posted reviews to say so had to resort to oh so predictable haughtiness. Trying to make those of us who didn't enjoy it feel silly, uneducated and inadequate is just so typical of these kind of people. (But two can play at that game I guess) The kind of people I'm talking about are the sort you get in the Tate Modern cooing and gasping at a student's unmade bed, a pile of bricks and even a pair of used underpants Like modern art, this kind of modern theatre represents the disease of postmodernism at its worst. Oh, we thought it was a absolute trash, and not even worth £10. ...

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