Bondagers & The Straw Chair
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published:12th May '97
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Two plays of haunting lyricism by one of Scotland's most dynamic playwrights Bondagers, winner of the LWT Plays on Stage Award 1990, draws out the shadowy figures of women exploited as cheap agricultural labour in the Border country of the last century, evoking the rich sounds of a way of life, lived in servace to the gentry. In The Straw Chair, set in the first half of the eighteenth century (1735-40), seventeen-year-old Isabel and her minister husband arrive from Edinburgh on the remote island of Hirta (St Kilda). Their encounter with the island's isolated inhabitants, and especially the outspoken and fearless Rachel of Grange, will change their lives for ever.Bondagers: "One of the finest plays of the modern Scottish theatre. It is raw an drough, warm and tender, funny enough to make your heart dance and movine enough to steal it away...This is a play that everyone should see." (Scotland on Sunday) The Straw Chair "A beguiling combination of things, starting with the incredible story of Lady Grange, banished by her husband to the remoteness of St Kilda. Hung around this framework is an evocation, as light and sharp as spindrift, of the strange life on the island." (Scotland on Sunday)
. . . one of the most striking things about Bondagers is just how ground-breaking the play's fusion of rich poetic text, striking physicality and a rhythmic musicality remains. * Herald *
(on Bondagers) . . . Glover's drama has lost none of its energy or timeliness . . . The core of the drama, though, lies in the richness of Glover's script . . . The greatness of Glover's play, though, lies in its refusal to become a straightforward piece of negative social polemic. * Scotsman *
(on Bondagers) . . . contemporary Scottish classic . . . Poetic, musical and elliptical, the play rises organically from the soil, its narrative line about a sexual assault emerging almost accidentally from its imagistic collage. * Guardian *
(on Bondagers) Sue Glover's 1991 play about women agricultural labourers in the Borders in the late 19th century is that rarest of beasts, a Scottish contemporary classic with an all-female cast. * The Times *
(on Bondagers) . . . Glover's play is arguably the finest of Scottish work plays . . . * Sunday Herald *
(on Bondagers) Sue Glover's 1991 play is flecked with hints of political attitudes that will turn the women's present into our past. * Observer *
ISBN: 9780413712103
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 14mm
Weight: 130g
160 pages