How to Hold Your Breath

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In a similar vein to Harris' previous Royal Court production, N ightingale and Chase, women are at the heart of her story with Dana and Jasmine as representatives for generations of forgotten voices. By coincidence, Harris's new version opened in the week the Westminster MP's expenses scandal broke in the UK press. But she does draw great, naturalistic performances from her cast, first and foremost Peake, who effectively holds the whole thing together with sheer incandescent presence.

REVIEW: How To Hold Your Breath, Royal Court Theatre

Each week, we send newsletters and communication featuring articles, our latest tickets invitations, and exclusive offers. Coupled with Dana’s hallucinogenic visitations from both Shaeffer’s increasingly agitated Jarron and Peter Forbes’s amusingly prissy, quasi-angelic librarian and Featherstone almost seems to be interpreting ‘How To Hold Your Breath’ as taking place in its protagonist’s head.

All seems straightforward enough but his parting claim that he is a powerful demon begins to fester and, worried by a strange mark on her chest, Dana begins to suspect she is indeed being tormented by a devil. It imagined the fall of Europe and what would happen to the Western privileged values and outlook if Europeans became the next wave of refugees. Starting her career at the Hampstead in ’99, she then received five star reviews for her play Further than the Furthest Thing with the Dundee Rep. With impressive artistry, Harris uses a seemingly innocent encounter to wrench upon concepts of modern day morality. In our third and final special feature on new works at the Royal Court Theatre, London, BBC Arts takes an in-depth look at How to Hold Your Breath - the theatre’s second highest-grossing show ever.

Zinnie Harris: Plays 1: Further than the Furthest Thing Zinnie Harris: Plays 1: Further than the Furthest Thing

She has been commissioned and produced by the Royal Court Theatre, Royal National Theatre, the National Theatre of Scotland and the Royal Shakespeare Company. On top of this, a librarian pops up in increasingly unlikely situations, offering “how to” self-help books to guide Dana through her various challenges.Embark on an epic journey through Europe with sisters Dana ( Maxine Peake) and Jasmine as they discover the true cost of principles in this twisted exploration of how we live now. It was awarded Best New Play at Critics' Awards [14] and was shortlisted for the Susan Smith Blackburn award [15] and Best New Play in the UK Theatre Awards. Please list any fees and grants from, employment by, consultancy for, shared ownership in or any close relationship with, at any time over the preceding 36 months, any organisation whose interests may be affected by the publication of the response. Alongside her original plays, Zinnie Harris has adapted and reworked a number of plays from the western dramatic canon revising female characters from those plays for a more contemporary and sympathetic eye. Now Zinnie Harris’s ragbag, grab-any-issue-that’s-around dystopia which takes in the collapse of Europe, the commercialisation of human relations, the diminishment of literary culture, the desperate, sea-borne flights of refugees.

How to Hold Your Breath review – ragbag dystopia starring

Harris, director Vicky Featherstone and lead actor Maxine Peake discuss the production and, below, we present in-depth deconstructions of key scenes from the play. If none of it is really happening, the geopolitical stuff loses value, as does Jasmin, whose heartbreaking, ugly late monologue about her baby is one of the play’s stand-out moments. Starting with a seemingly innocent one night stand, this darkly witty and magical thriller by Zinnie Harris dives into our recent European history.She can be both gut-wrenching and verbally quick-witted (like Hamlet in fact, the role she recently played at the Royal Exchange in Manchester). Everything happens on the same junk-covered set, with no sense that Dana and Jasmin are actually travelling anywhere.