hang (NHB Modern Plays)

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We are unsettled from the start thanks to a low hum, courtesy of sound designer Jonny Patton. There is some humour, derived from the functionaries’ attempts to make Three feel at her ease, to which she responds with sarcastic disdain. Two and Three (the officials, played by Claire Rushbrook and Shane Zaza) speak in that fake-sympathetic patter used by many counsellors. About a third of hang’s 70 minutes is given over to a minute dissection of bureaucratic inadequacy in the face of grief and anger. The jargon of transparency and auto-empathy is neatly caught – but there is not much new there. Nor is there much urgency in the stylised dialogue, with floating half-sentences masquerading as interrupted thought.

The unorthodox plot has us guessing and reassessing for much of the first part of this intermissionless play. The tension mounts as THREE seeks information from the employees of this institution, whose struggle to remain human is burdened by so many rules and protocols that they begin to lose the battle. hang is a chamber piece, set in an alternative, contemporary Britain. Its authorship may well have been inspired by the concept, in Sharia law, of qisas, in which the family of the victim of a violent crime is given the option to commute the death sentence handed down to the perpetrator.The play's counterpoint is a letter, written by inmate to victim, and it's almost too human to bear. Three could disregard it – that's entirely her choice – but its pull is too strong. When she asks for guidance, One and Two can't provide any: "procedural protocols" and all that mean they can't influence her decisions. The system finally fails the victim. It leaves her to live with the consequences of her choice, of her actions. One and Two move on to the next case. But the main set-piece of the evening is when Three has to choose the method of execution for the guilty man. As One describes, once again in bureaucratic language, the options of lethal injection, gas, firing squad, beheading and finally hanging, one of the neon strips in Jon Bausor’s atmospheric design begins to fizz. As you’d expect, the details of the mechanics of capital punishment are horrendous and appalling. In 2016, she won an ARIA (Audio and Radio Industry Award) from the Radio Academy for her radio play Lament. Produced by BBC Radio Drama London and broadcast on BBC Radio 4, Lament won the Gold Best Audio Dramatisation prize. [6] Film career [ edit ]

Under Izzy Rabey’s sensitive direction, the atmosphere remains palpably tense throughout, the few moments of silence allowing us space to ponder the gravity of the decisions being made. All attendees are required to present proof of vaccination or a recent negative (within 48 hours) Covid test, ID, and remain masked throughout the performance. Cryer, Robert (reissued 2011) Prosecuting International Crimes: Selectivity and the International Criminal Law Regime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). This is not to deny the compelling force of Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s performance. She is full of angry resentment and balefully combative stares" Dominic Cavendish, Telegraph Mutua, Makau wa (2001) ‘Savages, Victims, and Saviors: The Metaphor of Human Rights’, Harvard International Law Journal 42(1): 201–245.A highly talented cast, a “what would I do?” theme and some trenchant writing combine to provide seventy minutes of gripping (if traumatic) drama. Its proper dramatic craftmanship, digging further into a seemingly ordinary situation. Merging the most unimaginatively cruel fates for public institutions with the mundane and almost mechanical inevitabilities for humanly employement services; how we become so blind towards the execution of our jobs, that we can make any profession seem like the most ordinary task - this juxtapostion creates a striking metaphor for the experience of injustice in the face of government social services or other state services, and their interactions with the lower classes.

At less than an hour, Trade is brief, but it follows its own complete arc and is not without complexity. The shifting relationships of the three women are a mirror of the shifting relationship that the west has with the developing world, and Trade is as much about women's relationships with each other and each woman's relationship with herself as it about the transactions between man and woman, rich and poor, here and there, first and third world. And it is a procedure. For all the scripted sympathy and underlying safety nets, all the 'can we get you anythings' and the cups of tea in cheap Ikea mugs, this is callous and routine. One and Two are just doing their jobs. Three is ending a life. It takes five minutes for anyone to ask how she's been. When they do, the humanity of the question comes as a jolt.The only named characters in this play are off-stage, the friends and family of Character Three (Valerie Paul-Kerry), except she says she doesn’t really have friends any more, the result of the psychological and emotional impact of a grievous crime committed against her and her family. In the world in which the play inhabits, the victim has been empowered to choose the method of punishment that should be given to the perpetrator. It does at least naturally follow that if there’s a Character Three, then there must be a Character One (Sara Odeen-Isbister) and a Character Two (Henry Sharples).

Programmes – Discovery – Second Coming". Archived from the original on 5 June 2015 . Retrieved 5 June 2015. Claire Rushbrook and Shane Zaza grasp the hitches and rhythms of the text, as a pair of white-shirted officials, neither without compassion, but Marianne Jean-Baptiste is nothing less than astonishing in her unswervingness, in her damage, in the way she radiates" Jean-Baptiste, who clutches at her handbag like a lifebuoy, is magisterial: wounded and internal and then angry and lashing out" This play may suit chin-strokers and pseuds. Others will find it underpowered and ruddy irritating" Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard ★★★★Gradually, a highly emotional picture of Three’s family life emerges: her hard-working husband, her sister Suzette, her traumatised children Tyrell and Marcia. As well as true, hard feeling, the text here has a brutal, burnished poetry, its repetitions and reiterations glowing with the heat of an acutely imagined experience. By contrast, the language spoken by Two and One is banal, bland, evasive, and usually in bad faith. When they tangle themselves up in a particularly stupid, but entirely typical, lie, there was a gasp from the press-night audience as the deception was revealed.