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Mosquitoes
A story of sibling love that explores subjects closely linked to science: faith and reason, certainty and uncertainty, the pursuit of excellence and scientists’ constant struggle to balance their research ambitions with family life.
123 pages, Paperback
First published August 10, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
April 13, 2019
A play that has everything and is an amalgam of all the things I love about the theatre. Prescient and funny and sad and manages to encapsulate the biggest themes in the smallest spaces and marry the Higgs Boson to matters of familial discord, amongst other notable feats. Would love to see a production with the original cast.
Plus: five ***** in a row. I have been spoilt. Can David Keenan make it a half dozen?
Plus: five ***** in a row. I have been spoilt. Can David Keenan make it a half dozen?
June 20, 2023
A fantastic, interesting, complex play. I've seen it on stage, but it was great to read it, too.
February 17, 2021
Update: 2/16/21: On a second read, I can see the flaws more; there's a reason that (to my knowledge) the play has never been performed outside the original NT production - it needs to be streamlined and more focused, and the physical production simplified - the core of the play is still excellent, but it seems to shoot itself in the foot. :-(
The seeming love-child of Caryl Churchill & Tom Stoppard strikes again with her best play to date. Currently premiering at the National Theatre in what seems a perfectly cast production (Olivias Colman and Williams, who actually look like they could be sisters), critics have lauded Kirkwood's ambitious script, while decrying its sometimes overly complicated and jam-packed schema. I found the whole thing incredibly insightful, moving and downright hilarious ... and can only hope the NT films it for their touring cinema program.
The seeming love-child of Caryl Churchill & Tom Stoppard strikes again with her best play to date. Currently premiering at the National Theatre in what seems a perfectly cast production (Olivias Colman and Williams, who actually look like they could be sisters), critics have lauded Kirkwood's ambitious script, while decrying its sometimes overly complicated and jam-packed schema. I found the whole thing incredibly insightful, moving and downright hilarious ... and can only hope the NT films it for their touring cinema program.
June 8, 2023
This play is beautifully complex. I found it poetic and fully dimensional—espically in terms of the characters. I was lucky enough to get to see this performed and about a year later I read it on its own. Kirkwood has a beautiful gift of playwriting. Her characters are real people with real problems and complexities. I will say that while reading it on its own, the very science-y parts are a little advanced for my brain to wrap around them, but Kirkwood understood that most of her audience would be in the same boat, and so those moments are short and inserted sparingly enough for the reader to still follow and be engaged. The play is a little longer than others so it’s just a good, well thought out drama.
February 25, 2023
A family drama, with clever and witty dialogue, on the need to combine reason and empathy.
April 4, 2021
smart and interesting play about two unequal sisters, one a brilliant scientist - the other considered « stupid » by both the scientist sister and the now elderly mother, also an eminent scientist, « cheated » out if getting the nobel prize by her husband, who got all the recognition for their common work.
at the beginning of the play, jenny is pregnant and scared, thinking about everything that can go wrong while giving birth etc. - her sister is comforting her with the (well-known) story of giving birth to her son luke, even though in this regard too she seems much too perfect for comparison. tragedy will strike, and the two sisters will come together again in geneva some time later, where the physicist is working on a new subatomic particle generated in the collider. the practical intelligence of jenny will become apparent, in contrast to the scientific intelligence (but human deficiency) of her sister.
the dialogues are brilliant, natural and very often witty, even inmidst of tragedy.
i had the chance to see the play in the national theatre production directed by rufus norris, in which the sisters are played by olivia colman and olivia williams. the fantastic production, with its breathtaking set and rhythm is almost too good to be true - and i would recommend everybody interested to see it, as it is currently available on the nt webside. the only deficiency i found in the play is that there are a bit too many ideas, to many themes, which make it sometimes less focused then it could have been and take some dramatic strenght and depth away from what could have been the main story, the two unequal siblings. this being said, it is a very interesting text - and if you can see it in the national theatre production you will see theatre at its best.
at the beginning of the play, jenny is pregnant and scared, thinking about everything that can go wrong while giving birth etc. - her sister is comforting her with the (well-known) story of giving birth to her son luke, even though in this regard too she seems much too perfect for comparison. tragedy will strike, and the two sisters will come together again in geneva some time later, where the physicist is working on a new subatomic particle generated in the collider. the practical intelligence of jenny will become apparent, in contrast to the scientific intelligence (but human deficiency) of her sister.
the dialogues are brilliant, natural and very often witty, even inmidst of tragedy.
i had the chance to see the play in the national theatre production directed by rufus norris, in which the sisters are played by olivia colman and olivia williams. the fantastic production, with its breathtaking set and rhythm is almost too good to be true - and i would recommend everybody interested to see it, as it is currently available on the nt webside. the only deficiency i found in the play is that there are a bit too many ideas, to many themes, which make it sometimes less focused then it could have been and take some dramatic strenght and depth away from what could have been the main story, the two unequal siblings. this being said, it is a very interesting text - and if you can see it in the national theatre production you will see theatre at its best.
January 14, 2023
not a single likeable character in sight! fantastic news. i really enjoyed how complex it was, messy sisters and the need for scientific proof in human communication made you take sides with the more problematic sister on paper and I thought that was really effectively done. also just such a wide scope of topics covered in 120 pages, a major slay for Lucy!
April 26, 2020
Lucy Kirkwood gets to live in her brain all the time can u imagine
March 7, 2024
Layered and sad. Feel a bit like I missed the point.
June 22, 2023
Epic and detailed. A play about the very creation of our universe. Kirkwood expertly weaves the big picture with the small - a compelling family drama. The imagery is brilliant, and I imagine would be incredible effecting if you were to see the show live.
January 17, 2023
National Theater Live subscription 4: A mess of a story, made presumably by a person who grew up watching too much TV and forces the stage to fit the medium of screen. There are too many sets and set transitions, too many characters, too many ideas to be explored.
Unfortunate, as one of the many story threads in this involves a woman (Jenny) who accidentally kills her baby because she read fake news about how the MMR vaccine can cause autism. The baby contracts measles and dies. Pretty relevant stuff in the COVID era.
But here's how this storyline is treated: at one of the (way too many) narrative climaxes, Jen's scientist sister (Alice) yells at her for being a big huge dumb-dumb and believing the fake vaccine news. Jenny, who had struggled to conceive for a long time, and is spiraling with grief and regret, shoots back that Alice never told her that she was being an idiot - Alice had just said "you know best". Alice retorts, with deservedly righteous indignation, that she's not responsible for Jenny's idiocy, she's had a lifetime of being Jenny's sister and knew Jen would never take advice from her. This is an interesting start to a dialogue on values, intellect, family relationships; there's an additional complicating factor in that Jen and Alice's narcissist martinet of a mother was also an accomplished scientist and 1) favored Alice as the daughter who most resembled her 2) despises and condescends to Jen 3) pits them against each other 4) resents them both for limiting her scientific career 5) is oblivious to her own dependence on her daughters and failures as a mother.
This dialogue is terminated rather quickly and the plot speeds on to some boring nonsense about the hadron collider destroying the world, Alice's annoying incel teenage son, Alice's crazy ex-husband who appears as some kind of phantasmic Demosthenes declaiming about how we are all stardust in an unknowable universe. The plot then resolves in an insultingly contradictory way. Alice gets to discover the Higgs Boson, but Jen gets to save Alice's son by sacrificing herself, and becomes the temporary primary guardian for Alice's son (who hates Alice) - so idiot Jenny gets to be The Mother She Always Wanted To Be.
This is because plays like this, made for wealthy neolibs, like to rob Peter to pay Paul: they'd like to berate the poor for being stupid about "science" (and what a superficial view of science it is, it's a r/NatureIsFuckingLit tier circle-jerk), but then also punish the Science Career Woman for being an inadequate mother. Plays like this can never commit to one side, one position. So they end up having no position, not really. It's the pretense of nuance (i.e. no one is truly evil) hiding what is actually gutlessness in expression (i.e. we are uncomfortable with guilt and blame as a culture).
It is offensively tedious, and as long as a Shakespeare play for no discernible reason.
Unfortunate, as one of the many story threads in this involves a woman (Jenny) who accidentally kills her baby because she read fake news about how the MMR vaccine can cause autism. The baby contracts measles and dies. Pretty relevant stuff in the COVID era.
But here's how this storyline is treated: at one of the (way too many) narrative climaxes, Jen's scientist sister (Alice) yells at her for being a big huge dumb-dumb and believing the fake vaccine news. Jenny, who had struggled to conceive for a long time, and is spiraling with grief and regret, shoots back that Alice never told her that she was being an idiot - Alice had just said "you know best". Alice retorts, with deservedly righteous indignation, that she's not responsible for Jenny's idiocy, she's had a lifetime of being Jenny's sister and knew Jen would never take advice from her. This is an interesting start to a dialogue on values, intellect, family relationships; there's an additional complicating factor in that Jen and Alice's narcissist martinet of a mother was also an accomplished scientist and 1) favored Alice as the daughter who most resembled her 2) despises and condescends to Jen 3) pits them against each other 4) resents them both for limiting her scientific career 5) is oblivious to her own dependence on her daughters and failures as a mother.
This dialogue is terminated rather quickly and the plot speeds on to some boring nonsense about the hadron collider destroying the world, Alice's annoying incel teenage son, Alice's crazy ex-husband who appears as some kind of phantasmic Demosthenes declaiming about how we are all stardust in an unknowable universe. The plot then resolves in an insultingly contradictory way. Alice gets to discover the Higgs Boson, but Jen gets to save Alice's son by sacrificing herself, and becomes the temporary primary guardian for Alice's son (who hates Alice) - so idiot Jenny gets to be The Mother She Always Wanted To Be.
This is because plays like this, made for wealthy neolibs, like to rob Peter to pay Paul: they'd like to berate the poor for being stupid about "science" (and what a superficial view of science it is, it's a r/NatureIsFuckingLit tier circle-jerk), but then also punish the Science Career Woman for being an inadequate mother. Plays like this can never commit to one side, one position. So they end up having no position, not really. It's the pretense of nuance (i.e. no one is truly evil) hiding what is actually gutlessness in expression (i.e. we are uncomfortable with guilt and blame as a culture).
It is offensively tedious, and as long as a Shakespeare play for no discernible reason.
February 1, 2019
A moving and arresting piece of theatre. The way in which Kirkwood addresses jealousy, grief, loss and rage within a family dynamic is extremely relevant to the current cultural climate in which we find ourselves - the conflict between knowledge and wilful ignorance particularly struck me. Mosquitoes is a story for our times, dealing with both huge scale concepts concerning science but also the dramas which play out within families which can be just as earth shattering as any CERN produced experiment.
October 15, 2017
the definition of a damp squib
May 6, 2018
I’m fried
April 12, 2023
No recuerdo cuando fue la última vez que leí una obra de teatro, seguro años y la verdad no se por qué. Lo poco que leí me gusto pero a diferencia de la narrativa, no tengo como una inclinación particular por este género. Habiendo aclarado eso, Mosquitoes es probablemente uno de esos encuentros literarios fortuitos. No se a quién se lo robé o de donde saqué la recomendación, así que cuando empecé a leerlo no tenía idea de qué se trataba.
El concepto es muy interesante, retoma un hecho histórico no tan lejano. Allá por el 2008, 2012 (cuando todxs nos íbamos a morir), 2015, 2018, etc., se hablaba mucho de "la partícula de Dios" (el Bosón de Higgs). El Gran Colisionador de Hadrones es parte fundamental de esta obra de teatro. Una de las hermanas, Alice, es una gran científica y trabaja para que recrear el origen del universo mediante esta máquina LHC. Muy diferente a Jenny, su hermana a la que considera tonta y totalmente despreocupada por temas científicos. Me parece muy interesante cómo se aborda (y el solo hecho de que la autora haya elegido como tema) este discourse/narrativa de las dinámicas de hermanas, cuando abunda más el binomio madre-hija. Aquí el acento central está en estas hermanas como personajes, la madre también forma parte de un cuadro familiar extendido. Una científica también, aunque sus logros opacados por su propio esposo llevándose el crédito por su trabajo.
A partir de un suceso trágico, Jenny y su hermana se distancian hasta que ante los avances del proyecto de Alice, Jenny y su madre la visitan. En Ginebra, Alice vive junto a su hijo Luke quien se muestra muy crítico sobre el trabajo de su madre y sobre ella en general (como todo adolescente?).
Los temas de esta obra trazan cierto paralelismo con la pretensión objetiva de la ciencia. Esto es, por ejemplo, postulando axiomas. En las primeras páginas caemos en la trampa de asumir ciertas características sobre Alice y Jenny, pero a medida que la obra avanza estas se subvierten. Sin duda lo mejor que tiene Mosquitoes son sus personajes. Además de las hermanas y su madre, Luke tiene su propia línea de sucesos que desencadenan otro conflicto mayor. Y el bosón de Higgs aparece bajo la forma de narrador/voz. Profundamente trágica pero también graciosa, tiene un planteo muy interesante sobre la complejidad del duelo y el perdón. Me resultó muy entretenida pero quizás hacia el final, o un poco antes en realidad, se dispersa un poco. No se si soy muy justa en este punto porque como no leí tantas obras de teatro no tengo esa "sensibilidad" sobre el ritmo como sí puedo reconocer en la narrativa, que es lo que más he experimentado de lectura. En fin, fuera de ese detalle, totalmente recomendable.
El concepto es muy interesante, retoma un hecho histórico no tan lejano. Allá por el 2008, 2012 (cuando todxs nos íbamos a morir), 2015, 2018, etc., se hablaba mucho de "la partícula de Dios" (el Bosón de Higgs). El Gran Colisionador de Hadrones es parte fundamental de esta obra de teatro. Una de las hermanas, Alice, es una gran científica y trabaja para que recrear el origen del universo mediante esta máquina LHC. Muy diferente a Jenny, su hermana a la que considera tonta y totalmente despreocupada por temas científicos. Me parece muy interesante cómo se aborda (y el solo hecho de que la autora haya elegido como tema) este discourse/narrativa de las dinámicas de hermanas, cuando abunda más el binomio madre-hija. Aquí el acento central está en estas hermanas como personajes, la madre también forma parte de un cuadro familiar extendido. Una científica también, aunque sus logros opacados por su propio esposo llevándose el crédito por su trabajo.
A partir de un suceso trágico, Jenny y su hermana se distancian hasta que ante los avances del proyecto de Alice, Jenny y su madre la visitan. En Ginebra, Alice vive junto a su hijo Luke quien se muestra muy crítico sobre el trabajo de su madre y sobre ella en general (como todo adolescente?).
Los temas de esta obra trazan cierto paralelismo con la pretensión objetiva de la ciencia. Esto es, por ejemplo, postulando axiomas. En las primeras páginas caemos en la trampa de asumir ciertas características sobre Alice y Jenny, pero a medida que la obra avanza estas se subvierten. Sin duda lo mejor que tiene Mosquitoes son sus personajes. Además de las hermanas y su madre, Luke tiene su propia línea de sucesos que desencadenan otro conflicto mayor. Y el bosón de Higgs aparece bajo la forma de narrador/voz. Profundamente trágica pero también graciosa, tiene un planteo muy interesante sobre la complejidad del duelo y el perdón. Me resultó muy entretenida pero quizás hacia el final, o un poco antes en realidad, se dispersa un poco. No se si soy muy justa en este punto porque como no leí tantas obras de teatro no tengo esa "sensibilidad" sobre el ritmo como sí puedo reconocer en la narrativa, que es lo que más he experimentado de lectura. En fin, fuera de ese detalle, totalmente recomendable.
March 15, 2022
Kirkwood is always an interesting writer. I enjoyed the concepts and the much of the dialog. This play seems a bit overloaded with family dynamics: a mother worthy of a literal Nobel Prize developing dementia, a sister who "killed" her child by not giving them a measles vaccine, a son who runs away because he hates his school, and the "normal" family member is a high-end physicist working at CERN on the Higgs boson. It felt slightly overwrought at times.
And yet, there's fascinating material about what we know and how people are valued and/or recognized in society. I think the chaos is partially the point, especially given the odd belief we have that we can somehow create a world where we "get it right this time."
I'd definitely see it if I had a chance.
And yet, there's fascinating material about what we know and how people are valued and/or recognized in society. I think the chaos is partially the point, especially given the odd belief we have that we can somehow create a world where we "get it right this time."
I'd definitely see it if I had a chance.
February 24, 2022
Some interesting parallels drawn. The science was interesting…even for a lay person. But there were perhaps a few too many ideas being juggled in this play. It could have been more focused. All in all, however, reading this through the politicized lens of COVID is an illuminating exercise. Trying to set aside how one feels about people’s choices about vaccines today and reading this as a pre COVID piece is interesting and challenging in and of itself. It’s worth reading…and certainly thought provoking.
May 25, 2025
Holy shit. I bought this play back in 2024 when I visited New York and I just got around to it. Lucy Kirkwood is one of my favorite playwrights, she does such an incredible job at tackling controversial subjects in such an intriguing matter. The moral dilemma that was posed to me as I kept flipping through this book and sympathizing with Alice, and hating Jenny, but also seeing her grief and regret was something that had me SO HITCHED on this play. Downloading National Theatre at Home NOW to see the production of it because I am in awe.
May 14, 2019
First time reading a Lucy Kirkwood play, and I must say that I do feel inspired to read more. I read this play because I sadly missed it when I was in London. I really do hope to see this play staged in my lifetime. It’s very delicate. I also need to see it to understand the situation better, but wow, please have Olivia Colman revive her role.
In short: good play about the Higgs Boson aka God particle.
In short: good play about the Higgs Boson aka God particle.
December 1, 2020
Excellent, true to life dialogue. The things the characters are dealing with and the family dynamics are incredibly true to life. However, I didn't feel any resolve at the end and found it a rather depressing story which doesn't seem to have much in the way of redemptive storytelling. But then, I don't think it had an aim towards that.
August 30, 2019
A wild play about two sisters that couldn’t be more different from one another. Amazing dialogue from one of Britain’s best playwrights.
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April 5, 2020(Play discussion group script #36)
December 23, 2020
Hilarious and emotional, I was sucked into the play from the beginning.
February 26, 2022
I saw the National Theatre production with Olivia Coleman and fell head over heels for this play. It is clever, brutal, visceral & absolutely honest. And just gorgeous.
November 11, 2022
“a planet, the size of an apple
not because it is small, but because it is far away
not because it is small, but because it is far away”
i love it i love it i love it
not because it is small, but because it is far away
not because it is small, but because it is far away”
i love it i love it i love it
December 1, 2022
easily one of the best plays i've ever read, gripping from start to finish
December 25, 2023
insanely smart dramatically. and those themes! love some strong themes. can only image what this shit would look like on stage.
March 13, 2024
wow! that was a lot.
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March 27, 2024what 🤣😃
Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews