Hymn to self-slaughter

Anatomy of a Suicide looks at three generations of women in various phases of mental collapse. They line up on a stage that resembles a grey dungeon while sad events unfold around them. The first woman gets pregnant. The second takes heroin. The third argues with a lesbian about a fish. Their lives span several decades but their stories are presented simultaneously, and this tripartite method conceals the plain fact that the events dramatised are too flimsy to merit theatrical portrayal. A soap opera would baulk at such scenes: a druggie teenager bores a cameraman with a list of gloomy soundbites; a female wedding guest is partially seduced by a giggling gatecrasher; a patient in a hospital invites a nurse to eat some haddock.

Writer Alice Birch aims her characterisation at the chicklit crowd. All the females are sympathetic because they’re lost, miserable and a bit whiney. The males are uniformly horrible, aggressive, sentimental boors. With one exception: a black male character who seems so sweet and intelligent that he might be an honorary woman. Each change of scene involves a flash of lesbian titillation. The actresses are stripped to their bikinis by stage hands who pass them fresh costumes to climb into. Some scenes end with a massive CRUMP! and a surge of lights as if to remind us that a momentous art work is in progress. And the actors move to their new positions in super-slow motion, which gives a strong hint that This Play Deserves A Prize. It does, in a way, deserve a prize — for the most obtuse script of the year.

The dialogue has been crafted as an act of sabotage. Rather than editing and refining normal conversation to give it tension, shape and direction, Ms Birch has retained all the banal and pointless detritus of everyday speech.