Lungs (Modern Plays)

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His collaboration with Mitchell led to his meeting Leo Warner, the video designer who directed Macmillan's adaptation of City of Glass in 2017. During the rollercoaster ride that is ‘Lungs’ we are consistently asked as the audience to consider topics and themes such as: procreation, abortion, infidelity, the environment and even suicide. From very early on in the play MacMillan will really make you as a viewer examine when, how, why and even if it is ever right to bring a child into the world. There is a large emphasis on thinking about this in-depth; how it will change us, how will the child cope with the world it is born into. The philosophical questions posed from the couple asking each other are littered with tons of facts about the environment: Foy and Smith’s characters thus say something before immediately thereafter retracting it, or otherwise think through what has just been said and confirm that yes, they said what they meant, and they meant what they said. The press night audience, discerning and assuming as it was, let out a collective gasp towards the end of the performance, and even then, the plot twists kept landing. As Foy’s character said earlier on in the play, “It’s like you punched me in the face, then asked me a maths question.” Was there a happy ending? Well, I couldn’t possibly say. Talk about a play coming into its time. Duncan Macmillan’s ‘Lungs’ and its depiction of an unnamed couple freaking out over what to do with their lives in the face of imminent climate catastrophe was hardly irrelevant when it premiered in London seven years ago.

Kate is Artistic Director of award-winning Theatre6 and winner of the Noel Coward Trainee Director Bursary 2012 at The Salisbury Playhouse. She is represented by Alix Harvey- Thompson at Harvey-Thompson Ltd. 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. So is 2071 an intervention? The questions it poses – “What is happening to our planet, and what is our role in that?” – would suggest so. Still, Macmillan insists, it is not quite as simple as issuing a manifesto for saving the planet. As Rapley might say, it’s a bit more complicated than that.Canadian productions of the play were held at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto in March 2014 starring Brendan Gall and Lesley Faulkner, and in February 2015 at the Verb Theatre, starring Kyle Jespersen and Anna Cummer. [3] [4] I’ve never seen so much water before, and it’s not the water it’s just, I’ve never seen anything like this in the whole course of my life. British director Katie Mitchell has directed several of Macmillan's plays. Their collaborations include a play at the Royal Court Theatre titled 2071, which Macmillan later co-authored as a book on climate science with Professor Chris Rapley. [13] Macmillan's play The Forbidden Zone premiered at the Salzburg Festival before entering the repertoire of the Schaubühne Berlin and transferring to London's Barbican Theatre. [14] The play opens with M and W in an Ikea, and M unexpectedly suggests they have a baby. This proposition scares W, and the couple leaves without purchasing anything they intended which is the first hint at the couple’s inability to commit.

A review in The Guardian by Arifa Akbar of the 2019 performances at The Old Vic starring Matt Smith and Claire Foy, praised the production's leads and set design. [14] Awards and nominations [ edit ] Yet as satisfying as Macmillan’s gently realistic happy-ever-after ending is, it confirms the tentative optimism that underscores the piece: everything will be fine if we just focus on the positives. Their child grows up and they grow old, and although climate change is understood and debated by the characters in great detail, it isn’t something they ever seem to feel acutely. In the end, the solution is just to stop watching the news. In her final monologue, Foy bleakly tells us that ‘Everything’s covered in ash’, but despite this there’s still ‘fresh air’ to be found in central London.

Reviews

His lips are thin, and soft, and very pink and one time we kissed for eight minutes, I know coz we started kissing when Craig David’s album was on, and it was like Walking Away, which is three minutes 27 seconds and then we kept kissing after that when Time to Party came on which is like four minutes and six seconds so all together that’s like eight minutes. Eight minutes.