Nut

by debbie tucker green

Elayne doesn't want company but company won't leave her alone. Everyone's got an opinion but no one's listening and things are starting to slip.

nut premiered at The Shed at the National Theatre in October 2013, directed by the author.

"Provocative, touching, darkly humorous... its understated power is remarkable." - Time Out

"Masterly... deeply concerned, caring and powerful." - Financial Times

"Throbs with feeling... flecked with humour and poetry." - Evening Standard

"Mesmerising, even terrifying... this is pure, potent theatrical intensity." - Metro

"Sharp, spiky, subtle." - The Arts Desk

debbie tucker green is an award-winning playwright. Her plays include random , truth and reconciliation , stoning mary (all Royal Court), generations (Young Vic) and born bad (Hampstead Theatre), for which she won the Olivier Award for Most Promising Playwright. She made her directoral debut with a Channel 4 TV adaptation of her play random , which won the 2012 BAFTA for Best Single Drama.

Genres: Plays, Contemporary, Theatre

80 pages, Paperback

First published November 14, 2013

Reviews

[Ivo · Rating 3 out of 5]

As always with debbie tucker green, the dialogue flows brilliantly and there's some extremely clever wordplay, but I felt like the handling of the themes here and the twist (?) was kind of old hat. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it never did. I'll come back to this some other time, because I may have missed something.

[Joel Wall · Rating 5 out of 5]

debbie tucker green is a master of having things both remain unsaid and also crash home.

[Alex Rankine · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Alex Bucevac · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lol I did not understand what was happening with the dialogue and characters until far too late
I really am just such a ditsy silly little girly
Hehehehe

[jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not having seen this performed, I can't really give a full review of it as it was intended to be seen by tucker green herself (lowercase is her choice of naming, not a grammatical mistake on my part).

I initially found it hard to read, and after looking at reviews it seems it was also sometimes difficult to watch and keep up with the dialogue. In including so many dialogue interruptions between characters and the numerous silences that do make the speech more naturalistic, it makes the play almost disorientating. Rather like how someone dealing from mental health issues might find large conversations (I'm speaking from personal experience).

The play deals with mental health is a refreshing way. It's 'in-yer-face' without being melodramatic, as many films and other mediums tend to drift towards in an unhealthy fixation with 'crazy people'. I was quite surprised by the the revelation in Act Three where we discover Aimee, Devon and Trey are in fact products of Elayne's mind (or it is insinuated heavily that they are anyway). Whether they are hallucinations or just physical manifestations of her inner monologues doesn't really matter, they provide an insight into how mental health is not something to 'get over'. And as an audience we can't apply such prejudices to Elayne's situation because we don't actually realise the harmful behaviours imposed by Aimee (burning with a cigarette - a version of self-harming) are from within Elayne and not actual people harming her. It shows how 'external' mental health can feel, it is not something I or anyone places on themselves. We feel out of control. And the prevalent attitude of 'get over it' is not helping. While I am all for taking control of your life and realising you have the choice to get better, it is not as simple as that. It takes a long time to establish control over your life, as we see Elayne doing in the play's closing in small steps.

The play focuses on mental health, grounding itself in the black British community, and how it causes by lack of communication and familial patterns of unhealthy relationships. I can see in Maya, the daughter of Elayne's sister, similar patterns of mental health as in Elayne - notably that Maya is never offered the facilitation to say what SHE needs. She isn't even present on stage, just heard off-stage while her parents discuss what to do with her in the divorce and who is a better parent. Maya is not present in her own life decisions.

Overall, the play is such an innovative way of portraying mental health on stage. It always feels real. So many times do I watch mental health portrayed on TV, films or books and it feels so fake. Either the characters are too one-dimensional or they are melodramatic killers or stalkers or have multiple personalities. It was nice for once to not be tired of reading a character, to actually find within them a place that is poignant and real.

[Nick Newman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird but cool stuff.