Anatomy of a Suicide

What determines our character? Nature or nurture? Genetic inheritance or social environment? It is an age-old debate, and Alice Birch now adds to it with this startling theatrical triptych about three generations of mothers and daughters... Birch’s progress as a writer has been fascinating to watch... On the evidence so far, I would say Birch has a gift for radical experiment in the style of Caryl Churchill and Sarah Kane. In her new play we are confronted by three women, Carol, Anna and Bonnie, who we learn are mother, daughter and granddaughter. They exist in three different time zones but the story of their lives is told simultaneously. As Birch herself says, the text has been scored and can be read, or viewed, horizontally... I can, in fact, think of few exact parallels to this play. * Michael Billington, The Guardian *
The way conversations overlap, intersect, even chime exactly, as if words are echoing down the decades, is a compositional marvel... [any] vague misgivings pale beside the essential bravery and daring of it all: anyone who has experienced the nightmare of handed-on familial sadness, let alone the horror of suicide, will surely find in this a therapeutic-cathartic release. * Telegraph *
What a fiercely uncompromising, clinically emotional two hours this is Alice Birch, darling of the film world after her stark and powerful script for Lady Macbeth, returns in triumph to her home ground of the theatre for an unflinching examination of three generations of women in one family... an intricately interwoven work in which three separate scenes often play out simultaneously. * Evening Standard *