Lucy Prebble
Autor von Enron (Modern Plays)
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- Geburtstag
- 1981
- Geschlecht
- female
- Geburtsort
- Haslemere, United Kingdom
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- Werke
- 10
- Mitglieder
- 164
- Beliebtheit
- #129,117
- Bewertung
- 3.9
- Rezensionen
- 5
- ISBNs
- 27
- Sprachen
- 1
Length: Full Length Play. 2 Acts. Approximate time: about 2 hours 15 minutes, including interval; 74 pages
Dani is 17 and as many young people at the beginning of the century, she is looking for friendship (and more) in chatrooms online. And there she meets two men: 22-years old Lewis and the slightly older Tim. She decides to meet both of them and things start getting complicated - Lewis cannot believe that she is really a girl (and they end up having sex more than ones) while Tim is shocked to discover that she is a girl and 17 at that - he believed that he had been chatting with an 11 years old boy.
Once the shock is over, Dani remains friends with both of them - mainly just having sex with Lewis (while he seems to think it is more serious) while developing a real friendship with Tim. And that second relationship is what drives the play - because Dani opens up about her own problems to this damaged man who is trying to be good. And while she is trying to fix both her companions (sex for one of them, a friendly ear for the other) and openly discuss them with the other one, her own family collapsed around her - or ends her collapse anyway. The 4th character in Dani's circle is her mother Jan who finally realizes that her husband has an affair - or better to say that she finally allows herself to admit it.
And that's where the first act closes. It seems pretty obvious who is supposed to be the bad guy. Except that life is never that easy - and when Dani finally needs help, she gets it from the villain Tim. And Lewis manages to slide into the role of the villain by what amounts to stalking. Until the very end when Dani decides to help Tim and discovers that nothing is what it looks like.
It is a disturbing play - it is designed to be. Good and evil are not absolutes and everyone can have redeeming qualities - even when they still remain human garbage. The fact that by the end of the play both of the men look equally villainous is unexpected but not very surprising. And somewhere in that crazy circle, a mother and a daughter maybe finally find a way to communicate.
This was the first play Prebble wrote and it managed to win quite a lot of awards during its first run: The Critics' Circle Award (2004), George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright (2004) and TMA Award for Best New Play (2004) and lost the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize to Sarah Ruhl. And the play deserves its accolades - it is nuanced and funny and even 17 years later, still relevant (except for the chatrooms of course).
PS: The title comes from a WWII practice as explained by Jan: during the London raids, people were issued ratio tokens and they could either collect a lot of them and buy meat or use a token at a time to buy sugar and sweets. As noone knew if they will be alive after the next raid, people went for the instant gratification. All of the subplots in the play are all about instant gratification - so the title fits perfectly.… (mehr)