ANNA

by Ella Hickson

1968. East Berlin.

Anna and Hans are married, in love and moving up in the world – but it is a world ruled by suspicion. Who can be trusted when everyone is listening? Can we ever escape our past?

Written by playwright Ella Hickson, and co-created with sound designers Ben and Max Ringham, ANNA unfolds with all the tension of a spy thriller, and the inexorable revelations of an Ibsen play.

ANNA premiered at the National Theatre, London, in May 2019, directed by Natalie Abrahami, with the audience wearing individual headsets to direct their attention amongst the overlapping scenes on stage. This uniquely formatted edition of the script features all of the play's dialogue, including the scenes seen but not heard in performance.

Genres: Plays

96 pages, Paperback

Published May 23, 2019

Reviews

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an intriguing theatrical experiment, but how successful it is in production is dubious, from the mostly mixed reviews it received. READING it is also problematic. It contains elements of some previous, perhaps more successful ventures: the futuristic sound design of Complicite's The Encounter; the wire-tapping eavesdropping East German motif of the film 'The Lives of Others'; the competing scenes in various locales of Tamara; the sideways script with the overlapping dialogue of Anatomy of a Suicide. Apparently it only runs a little over an hour, but since the script contains much more material, with the overlapped scenes which are NOT heard, it takes twice as long to read it. I'd love to see it performed (although it's doubtful it will see many productions, due to the technical requirements), but reading it is a bit disappointing.

[Eva · Rating 5 out of 5]

incredibly captivating with a major plot twist at the end (!)