Mugged

by Andrew Payne

Mugged is an exciting play for pupils at KS3/4, focusing on issues that are both gripping and relevant to young people. It is accompanied by stimulating background materials containing fantastic ideas for drama exercises, as well as further activites to answer English Framework and NC objectives. Every morning, a group of teenagers meet up on their way to school and hang out on the benches in the park. And every morning they are faced with the same take the short cut across the park and risk running into the muggers, or go the long way round and risk being late!

320 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2005

Reviews

[Abigail · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a shit show of a performance. The play itself is boring and empty, with no character depth and a severe lack of plot. A group of friends get mugged, one friend stands up to the muggers and gets stabbed and killed, then the other friends decide to be more careful. How dull, what was this supposed to teach us? Don't walk around in dodgy areas? Don't stand up to muggers? It seemed it was meant to be an emotional play to teach children on safety but really it was just lame and embarrassing to perform.

[Ryan O'Pray · Rating 2 out of 5]

Purpose and audience. This is a brief (the briefest) play about a youth stabbing incident. It was written during a time when such incidents were said to be high in frequency - and resultantly were placed high on news agendas - but is still a relevant read.

There is no depth to the prose or the characters, where it succeeds is through a gritty realist perspective of young Kitchen Sink lives: the temperamentally, the vacuousness, the social ordering.

However, ultimately the strength of this piece is in its existentialism, the penultimate scenes in particular. Those were the only times I felt a touch of emotion.