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Handbag

  • Mark Ravenhill
  • Full Length Play, Dark Comedy, 1990s, Victorian (British and American)
  • 3M, 3F
  • ISBN: 9780413737601

"Handbag entertainingly and sometimes jarringly explores the timeless search for love, acceptance and meaning in what's often an unwelcoming world."

Washington Blade

More information

Description

  • Full Length Play
  • Dark Comedy

  • Time Period: 1990s, Victorian (British and American)
  • Target Audience: Adult
  • Set Requirements: Unit Set/Multiple Settings
  • Cautions: Intense Adult Themes, Drugs

  • Performance Group:
  • Large Stage, Community Theatre, Professional Theatre, Blackbox / Second Stage /Fringe Groups, College Theatre / Student
Twenty-eight years before The Importance of Being Earnest, a young woman gives birth to a baby boy. Is it an accident when Nanny places him in a handbag and her unpublished novel into the pram? in 1998 a new baby is stolen and an academic discovers an unpublished novel of more than usual revolting sentimentality.

From Victorian wet nurses to 90s sperm banks, Mark Ravenhill's play examines the role of parenting in an age of diverse sexualities, biological engineering and Tinky Winky's handbag.
REVIEWS:

"In Shopping and Fucking, Mark Ravenhill made theatre relevant to the Thatcher generation. Now he's put videos and Net-surfing in Faust. And it's no less stunning."

 The Guardian

"A promising idea awaits dramatic payoff in Handbag, the Mark Ravehill play that -- whatever else its achievements -- confirms that the author of Shopping and Fucking is no one-play wonder."

Variety

"Handbag entertainingly and sometimes jarringly explores the timeless search for love, acceptance and meaning in what's often an unwelcoming world."

 Washington Blade

"There are few stage authors writing more interestingly than Mark Ravenhill... He is -- it is now yet more evident -- a searing, intelligent, disturbing sociologist with a talent for satirical dialogue and a flair for sexual sensationalism."

 Financial Times

Premiere Production: First performed at the Lyric Hammersmith Studio, London, in 1998 and was commissioned by the Actors Touring Company.

Characters

  • Casting: 3M, 3F
  • Casting Attributes: Reduced casting (Doubling Possible)
  • Casting Notes: Five of the roles are double-casted and feature two gay couples.

  • TOM / CARDEW
    LORRAINE / PRISM
    SUZANNE / CONSTANCE
    MAURETTA / AUGUSTA
    DAVID / MONCRIEFF
    PHIL

    • Available Material

    Name Price
    Handbag Script This is optional. Order Now

    Twenty-eight years before The Importance of Being Earnest, a young woman gives birth to a baby boy. Is it an accident when Nanny places him in a handbag and her unpublished novel into the pram? in 1998 a new baby is stolen and an academic discovers an unpublished novel of more than usual revolting sentimentality.

    From Victorian wet nurses to 90s sperm banks, Mark Ravenhill's play examines the role of parenting in an age of diverse sexualities, biological engineering and Tinky Winky's handbag.

    		$24.95

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