Bedlam

by Nell Leyshon

Set in the notorious 18th Century lunatic asylum that gives the play its name, Bedlam is the story of how a cruel and unusual institution starts to crumble, after the arrival of an unassuming country girl.
Nell Leyshon's new play is an anarchic tale of madness and sanity, authority and incarceration and the arbitrary lines that separate them.
Full of violence, romance and reverie, Bedlam will make history this September when it becomes the first ever production by a female writer to be staged at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.

Genres: Plays

128 pages, Paperback

First published September 5, 2010

About the author

Nell Leyshon is a British playwright and novelist born in Glastonbury, Somerset. At the age of eleven, she moved to a small farming village on the edge of the Somerset Levels. Her first attempts at novels were with a baby on her lap. She burned a lot of the early writing, and finally started on Black Dirt, which was her first published novel.

While struggling to write prose, she got a commission from BBC Radio 4 to write a radio drama, "Milk", which won the Richard Imison Award for best first radio play. Her second play, The Farm, was runner up for the Meyer Whitworth Award.

Her novel, Black Dirt was published in 2005 and was long-listed for the Orange Prize and runner up for the Commonwealth Prize.

Her third novel, The Colour of Milk, was published in May 2012 and has won the Prix de l’Union Interalliee and was nominated for the Prix Femina in France and was was voted the book of the year in Spain. Her most recent novel, "Memoirs of a Dipper" was published in 2015.

Reviews

[Corrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bedlam is an actual play (played at the Globe in 2010) about the notorious Bedlam asylum set in the 18th century. There is a lot of singing, drinking and carousing going on. Cold baths, bleeding and laxatives seems to be the common treatment for the poor mad and the public can come and gawk at them for a penny.

“Leyshon has also come up with a satisfying narrative, in which a sailor seeks the beautiful girl who has gone mad in his absence, a rakish poet who has driven another woman into Bedlam receives a deserved comeuppance, and the drunken bully in charge of the hospital finds himself confronted by a decent new governor of reforming zeal. Jessica Swale directs a lively production, with a host of winning performances and a terrific selection of popular songs from the period, including one spectacularly filthy ditty that reaches a truly riotous climax.” - Charles Spencer, Telegraph

I think Phyllis the gin seller is the star of the play.

PHYLLIS: Gin. Get your gin. Kill-grief. Heart’s ease. Kick in the guts. Strip me naked. Drunk for one penny. Dead drunk for two penny. Clean straw for nothing.

Reading a play is a bit odd because it is much more sparse than a novel. I would love to see it performed live at the theater though.

3 stars

[Guy · Rating 3 out of 5]

68 on my scale, if I could use it here. So, maybe just short of 4 starts.
- Read in one go. -

I am not a play reader, so perhaps this is part of my feelings towards the book/play, as I LOVE with capital everything all Nell Leyshon's books.

So, not a real or deep review here. I really do not have much to say about it. You can read about it on the cover, I can only say this, as with all of Leyshon's characters i grow to like them and develop an interest in them, quite quickly.

The good here is that I did, although I found them mostly banal. Which is also the negative here, and perhaps the reason behind my less than 4 stars rating.