Plays 1: Weldon Rising / Butterfly Kiss / Disappeared / The Strip

by Phyllis Nagy

Includes her three Royal Court -performed plays Weldon Rising "Here is the best new play I have seen in many months…This play is exciting because it is well written, unusually constructed and morally serious." (Financial Times); in Butterfly Kiss "Nagy captures the texture of a life and writes short, vivid, often disturbingly erotic scenes…it's a play that leaves me proclaiming Nagy a writer of real talent" (Guardian), Disappeared (winner of the Mobil Prize,1995) "A piece that gets right under your skin…There's no neat solution to Nagy's conundrum, just a fog of fear, despair, and most remarkably of all, a final mirage of escape. Spine-tingling stuff" (Daily Telegraph) The Strip, "kaleidoscopic and hugely accomplished dissection of fate, love and chance" (Independent)

"Each play I see by Phyllis Nagy confirms me in the belief that she is the finest playwright to have emerged in the 1990s" (Financial Times)

Genres: Plays

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 25, 1998

Reviews

[Charlie Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Phyllis Nagy is a frustrating writer. She clearly has talent, but she doesn't seem to be very cohesive with all the elements she ties together.

Wheldon Rising - 2 stars
A very dense play to start the collection. You could tell this was her first play, as even by her standards of naturalism in dialogue, it sounded strange to the ear. The plot is quite simple: a homophobic attack seems to cause a heatwave, experienced particularly through the all-gay cast.

Butterfly Kiss - 3.5 stars
A better, more interesting plot. Formally more innovative. And the dialogue seems to ring more true. I like how the motive is suggested but never clearly stated and enjoyed the unusual structure.

Dissappeared - 4 stars
A good black comedy. Complete with a fairly typical Menacing Stranger character and ambiguous ending. Reminded me of a less funny version of Martin McDonagh's Hangmen, or Martin Crimp's Dealing with Claire.

The strip - 2 stars
This play felt messy. There were far too many moving parts and none of the characters were particularly likeable. Some of the dialogue was okay but definitely not her best play.

[Harry McDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Female impersonation is a rather curious career choice for a woman, Miss Coo." - The Strip.

Phyllis Nagy's plays are cohered by a similar tone - vaguely noir-ish, implicitly dangerous - a shared dread and celebration of fate, and a similar playing with chronology. They're complex texts, demanding of a reader and I would imagine of an audience, but they're relentlessly imaginative and theatrical.

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Weldon Rising: 4/5 - A strange, devilishly theatrical explosion of a moment; a homophobic attack against the backdrop of the end of the world. Violence up against violence. Voyeur against victim.

Butterfly Kiss: 4/5 - a play with no handholds, and a strange eroticism.

Disappeared: 4/5 - Certainly the most accessible of the plays in this collection, with a clearer sense of genre but equally as spiky a collection of characters.

The Strip: 4.5/5 - oh I really loved this one. A weird road trip play, with a now typical cast of eclectic characters, now featuring a Kushner-like apocalyptic theme, Liverpool, and the Coleherne: all my favourite things.

[Troy Tradup · Rating 3 out of 5]

This rating only applies to the first play in this collection, Weldon Rising. No review on this one. I did like the play, particularly the humor, but I don't know if I fully "got" it. I'll need to see a production and then read the script again before I can form a coherent opinion.