How to Hold Your Breath

Product Information

Harris places her protagonist in an Odyssean role as she traverses the storms brewing in European society. Photograph: Tristram Kenton Maxine Peake (Dana) and Michael Shaeffer (Jarron) in How To Hold Your Breath by Zinnie Harris at the Royal Court. Ever since her early plays, such as By Many Wounds (1999) and Further Than the Furthest Thing (2000), playwright Zinnie Harris has paid as much attention to the language of her work as to its characters and storytelling. She was Associate Director at the Traverse Theatre from 2015 – 2018 and the current Associate Artistic Director at the Royal Lyceum Theatre. 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).

How to Hold Your Breath by Zinnie Harris | Goodreads

She has been commissioned and produced by the Royal Court Theatre, Royal National Theatre, the National Theatre of Scotland and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Peter Forbes’ ever-helpful librarian injects humour as he offers increasingly absurd self-help books such as “How to Spot Danger and Know How to Deal with It” and “How to Catch up with the Times as They Change”. In her version of Strindberg’s Miss Julie, Julie is a character with actions of those of a child who is scared of and has been coerced by her father. This trilogy of plays was inspired by Aeschylus' Oresteia and retells the ancient story placing the women at the centre of the story.To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. How To Hold Your Breath is no exception, and if you like your drama delivered with a creative, witty, intelligent and political punch – with the exceptional Peake as a bonus, of course – this show’s surreal, dark vision is likely to dazzle. Vicky Featherstone’s production comes complete with fine support from Christine Bottomley, who gives an emotionally demanding performance as her long-suffering sister, and a suitably devilish Michael Shaeffer as the tortured demon with a penchant for expensive suits. For a moment it looks as if the play might do for devils what Let the Right One In did for vampires, and tether serious disturbance to a spooky device.

Zinnie Harris | National Theatre of Scotland Zinnie Harris | National Theatre of Scotland

The language is fuzzy, and sometimes utterly cliched: “She saw the dark swamp at the bottom of the human soul. 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. All too often, women are excluded from the picture or, where they are its focus, the framing is limited to traditionally feminine situations. Harris’ satirical piece might just have you debating that for days, but on a literal basis it’s all the fault of academic Dana’s refusal to take payment for her services following a one-night stand with a demon.However, Harris steers the play in another direction where reality fractures in a journey that increasingly becomes a nightmare. Harris is a good postmodernist voice in contemporary theatre, but it sometimes feels a little too off-the wall - and from what I've seen of the play performed - it definitely reads better than it performs. Harris puts it in the context of the current EU crisis, brought about by misjudged debt, and imagines the consequences of a complete collapse of Europe’s economies. To that end, her plays place women at the centre of the story – relatable women, who are not defined simply by their gender or romantic relationships.

BBC Arts - BBC Arts - How to Hold Your Breath at the Royal Court

Peake is in androgynous kit (very bad getting-on-for-jodhpur trousers) and sports the David Bowie crop she had as Hamlet. 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. Each week, we send newsletters and communication featuring articles, our latest tickets invitations, and exclusive offers. They have everything from basic sourdoughs and baguettes to ciabatta, mini savoury filled focaccias and even Breton Kouign Amann.By this I mean plays that not only have a really contemporary sense of character, plot and dialogue, but are also written in a distinctly individual language whose texture is singular and personal.