DownloadThe Portobello Bookshop Gift Guide 2024

Cannibals

Rory Mullarkey author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Published:3rd Apr '13

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Cannibals cover

The first full-length play by Pearson Playwright in Residence Rory Mullarkey and winner of both the George Devine Award and Harold Pinter Playwriting Prize 2014.

On a farm, in a village, on the fringe of Europe, life is simple but hard. When the sweeping forces of war and progress pass through, Lizaveta must run for her life. Finding shelter on an old woman’s farm, she tries to piece her life back together. But her past catches up with her and she must keep moving. Her journey through a land of mud and blood, icon painters and holy fools, takes her across continents to the other side of the world. Through Lizaveta’s eyes familiar places and notions of love, family and identity become distant and strange. Cannibals is a bold and unique play by Manchester playwright, Rory Mullarkey. It is his first full-length play, written while he was Pearson Playwright in Residence at the Royal Exchange in 2011.

The narrative feels as primal and timeless as an orthodox chant, boldly connecting a mythic world of babushkas, icon-painters and holy fools to the plight of abducted east European brides in modern-day Manchester … Cannibals is not an easy play to watch, or even a particularly easy play to like. But it could be one of the most provocative, original and disturbing debuts since Blasted. -- Alfred Hickling * Guardian *
Hard, uncompromising and in its literal sense visceral, there are some truly unappetising moments in this brutal and bloody drama. Yet it is far from being a relentless gore-fest … There is real tension in the play … brilliantly exciting drama. -- Jonathan Brown * Independent *
Mullarkey ... has talent, for seeking out a real subject and for translating it into action on stage. -- Susannah Clapp * Observer *

  • Winner of James Tait Black Prize for Drama 2014 (UK)

ISBN: 9781472524935

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 91g

80 pages