Plays 2: The Gut Girls / Beside Herself / Head-Rot Holiday / The Madness of Esme and Shaz

by Sarah Daniels

Sarah Daniels is "a writer with a natural talent for disturbance"—Observer

Set in the gutting sheds of the slaughterhouse at the Cattle Market in late Victorian Deptford, The Gut Girls shows how the lives of the girls are changed when their work is made illegal - "Regarded as little better than whores by their contemporaries the gut girls are…a boisterous, beer-swilling, strong-minded bunch, handy with a knife both in the gutting shed and outside it, defiantly independent in attitude and scornful of the illusion of male supremacy." Malcolm Hay (Time Out). Beside Herself is the first of three plays in this volume that deal with women and madness - "a dramatic analogue of a contemporary social tragedy which exists on a scale we are only just beginning to comprehend" (Observer); Head-Rot Holiday commissioned by Clean Break theatre company for ex-offenders, portrays the fate of women detained in special hospitals, a euphemism for an institution for the "criminally insane" - "There is a fine, hard humour, as well as compassion, in the way Head-Rot Holdiay examines the contradictions entangling these women's lives"; The Madness of Esmé and Shaz is "A weird and wondrous black comedy." (Spectator)

Genres: Plays, Theatre

352 pages, Paperback

First published December 5, 1994

About the author

Sarah Daniels (born November 1956 in London [1]) is a British dramatist. She has been a prolific writer since her first professionally performed play, Ripen Our Darkness, was given a production at the Royal Court in 1981.

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had a copy of 'Plays 2' for a good 5 or 6 years now. I hadn't heard of Sarah Daniels and I needed something to read on holiday. These four plays are some of the greatest I have ever read. At times hilarious and at others deeply disturbing. Daniels is a mastercraftswoman of stage direction and quirky, intelligent dialogue. Beside Herself is a highlight.