Product Description

Martin Crimp's 17 scenarios for the theatre, shocking and hilarious by turn, are a rollercoaster 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. Since its premiere at the Royal Court Theatre in March 1997, "Attempts on her Life" has been translated into more than 20 languages. The National Theatre presented its first major UK revival in March, 2007.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #92365 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

Customer Reviews

Masterpiece of Nineties Theatre
This is a remarkable play that very much plays with ideas of character, a category once considered fundamental to the theatre. The scenarios are amazing in their subtle understanding of contemporary consumer culture and the remains of the human being found therein.

The play starts as it means to go on: the first scene is called 'All Messages Deleted'. And they certainly are. The idea of communicating about A.N. Other is well and truly exploded. It is very difficult to say anything meaningful abot the central figure, 'Anne'. The reader is left with a host of impressions, none of which particularly tally with the others.

But the play isn't simply a remarkable work with respect to its content. It also challenges theatres by refusing to attribute character names to text, thus opening up the realization process and allowing actors to negotiate the text on their terms, not bowing to the authority of an author.

So, a wonderful play that truly engages the imagination in a way that so much contemporary UK theatre can only dream of.

An ultra-modern explanation of a girl simply known as Anne.
As an A Level student using Martin Crimps work as my practical piece, I feel I am a good source of judgment within this play inparticular. This sixteen scened dramatisation of a girl named Anne has been described by top critics as ultra-modern. Indeed it is with each scene, cut off from the rest, standing on there own. In the bigger picture Crimp cleverly threads the outcomes of each scene to create an image of this girl. But who is she and what are the attempts on her life? Are they simply attempting to kill her? No. I see this play more of an attempt to understand and explain an unknown girl. Maybe someone we all know, someone who walks in and out of lives each day. There are explanations to simply tell the audience of Anne, her life story and her personality yet through clever and interesting dialogue its something more. More of an insight into an extreme version of ourselves, if everything in your life was taken to its maximum.

Crimp's characterless piece lends well to the creative mind. However time is needed to work out exactly what the piece is explaining. Some seem to have little to do with an explanation of a girl yet somehow fit into this modern setting. Using over-lapping dialogue, not-otherwise stressed vocabulary and a sense of 'what is this all about?', Martin Crimp's use of unformatted scenes, little written direction and sometimes graphic imagery, the girl Anne (a.k.a Anna, Annie and Anushka) will leave the audience, actor and reader with a pondering thought - 'Oh?' Not very concluding Crimp's play starts its last scene with a summary of what the characters think of her. However as people do, conversations get lost, words get misunderstood and the final scene ends with a discussion about previously frozen fresh salmon.

Overall, a very entertaining, thought provoking and interesting piece, well worth reading as a modern altnerative to theatre.

A jigsaw for the New Millenium
In Martin Crimp's play from 1997, Attempts on Her Life, a series of apparently disconnected groups and individuals describe what we are invited to think of as one woman, the character of Anne. This woman has various mutually contradictory nationalities, histories and ages; who appears at one point to be a terrorist (of the left or the right), at another the drowned daughter of grieving parents, at another an artist and, at one point, a newly-launched car. Crimp's purpose is not only to question whether we can truly know another human being, but also whether we can regard other people as existing at all, independent of the models we construct. By inviting us to find connections between free-standing scenes he demonstrates that the project is doomed. Just as deconstruction employs the interpretative vocabulary of structuralism to question the possibility of interpretation, so writers like Crimp use the analytic vocabulary of Modernism to challenge the notion of causality. Crimp believes we have no personality beyond what is imposed - by equally suspect subjects - from outside. FAB!