Consent (NHB Modern Plays) - Softcover

Nina Raine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1848426305 ISBN 13: 9781848426306

Publisher: Nick Hern Books, 2017

Synopsis

Why is Justice blind? Is she impartial? Or is she blinkered?

Friends Ed and Tim take opposing briefs in a rape case. The key witness is a woman whose life seems a world away from theirs. At home, their own lives begin to unravel as every version of the truth is challenged.

Consent, Nina Raine's powerful, painful, funny play, sifts the evidence from every side and puts Justice herself in the dock.

Consent premiered at the National Theatre, London, in 2017. It transferred to the Harold Pinter Theatre in London's West End in May 2018.

About this title

Review:

Modern Classics don't come along very often. Consent is without a shadow of a doubt, just that. --Variety

Nina Raine's awe-inspiringly eloquent play explores the nuances of consent, empathy and a broken criminal justice system in a way that's gained new relevance in the #MeToo era... bold and far reaching. --Time Out London

More than Consent. Heartfelt approval. It is hard to overemphasise the multilayered subtlety of Nina Raine's new play... Consent has a long future. It pulls off one of the most important things a play can do: it helps us to listen in a new way. --Observer

A thrilling revenge drama... powerfully written, and both entertaining and thought-provoking. --Arts Desk

Funny, pointed and complex... Raine's writing crackles with a sharp-tongued and witty energy. Every line is measured and well-balanced, offering a sure-footed and somewhat galling examination of people, with all their horrendous faults on show. --whatsonstage

A play of fierce moral intelligence... always lively and engrossing... Consent stimulates debate rather than stifles it. --Guardian

Intricately layered... besides its astute observation of the balancing acts involved in marriage, there's plenty of finely tuned comedy. There's also an eagerness to address universal concerns - justice, betrayal, revenge and forgiveness. Yet more than anything else Raine is interested in language, which lies at the heart of every legal case and proves so worryingly slippery. --Evening Standard

Nina Raine's new play is so emotionally bruising that it feels almost glib to describe it as 'a black comedy'. It is a domestic drama about empathy, justice and - of course - consent that wallops the sh*t out of you for two-and-a-half hours. It is a play about things we prefer not to talk about; it is like going ten rounds with the elephant in the room, and at the end both of you are crying. Playwrights should be talking about this stuff, and Raine doesn't hold back. --Time Out

Exquisitely devastating... Raine brings her scalpel to the dissection of the human heart when it comes to love, marriage, relationships, fidelity and revenge, flaying every part of it with clinical precision... the lacerating dialogue is leavened with generous lashings of humour. Consent may be exhausting, but it's also darkly, overwhelmingly funny, even at its bleakest points. --Exeunt magazine

About the Author:

Nina Raine is a director and playwright. Her other plays include Tiger Country (Hampstead Theatre, London), Tribes, winner of the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award and Drama Desk Award (Royal Court, London, and Barrow Street Theatre, New York) and Rabbit, which won her the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright (Old Red Lion and West End).

About this edition

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1848426305
• ISBN 13: 9781848426306
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96