Patricia Highsmith

Phyllis Nagy

The first stage adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's famous crime novel Tom Ripley is a criminal with an ambiguous past. He is sent to Italy by a wealthy financier to try and coax home the rich man's son. In the process Ripley becomes both attracted and seduced, finding the murder the only way to deal with the situation. From that point Ripley tries to cover up his crime. Patricia Highsmith's beguiling tale of morality and amorality is given a dramatic rendering by contemporary dramatist Phyllis Nagy, who knew Highsmith in her later years in Paris. "Each play I see by Phyllis Nagy confirms me in the belief that she is the finest playwright to have emerged in the 1990s" (Financial Times)

Play

The Talented Mr Ripley

"Young playwrights don't come much hotter than Phyllis Nagy" (Daily Telegraph) Includes her three Royal Court -performed plays Weldon Rising "Here is the best new play I have seen in many months...This play is exciting because it is well written, unusually constructed and morally serious." (Financial Times); in Butterfly Kiss "Nagy captures the texture of a life and writes short, vivid, often disturbingly erotic scenes...it's a play that leaves me proclaiming Nagy a writer of real talent" (Guardian), Disappeared (winner of the Mobil Prize,1995) "A piece that gets right under your skin...There's no neat solution to Nagy's conundrum, just a fog of fear, despair, and most remarkably of all, a final mirage of escape. Spine-tingling stuff" (Daily Telegraph) The Strip, "kaleidoscopic and hugely accomplished dissection of fate, love and chance" (Independent) "Each play I see by Phyllis Nagy confirms me in the belief that she is the finest playwright to have emerged in the 1990s" (Financial Times)

Weldon Rising; Disappeared; The Strip; Butterfly Kiss

Nagy Plays: 1

"Each play I see by Phyllis Nagy confirms me in the belief that she is the finest playwright to have emerged in the 1990s" (Alistair Macaulay, Financial Times) Nagy's latest play is a blend of chilling humour and surrealism, interconnected issues of sex, truth, sincerity, psychology and mystery. "Whereas much contemporary playwriting is egregious, anorexic, short-winded and uncluttered, Nagy writes sinuously and elegantly, working towards a theatrical coalescence of plot, dialogue and swiftly changing scenic representation that is as exciting as it is unusual" (Michael Coveney)

Never Land

Never Land is a moving and heartbreaking exploration of the final days of a singular French family whose one dream is to settle in England.

Adapted from the Novel by Patricia Highsmith

The Talented Mr. Ripley

Weldon Rising. Downtown New York. The temperature is soaring. In the meat-packing district, Natty Weldon's lover is casually butchered by a homicidal homophobe. The witnesses do not intervene. Natty flees in terror, two lesbians watch from their apartment window and a flamboyant transvestite prostitute cowers in the street below. But life changes for them all after the murder. Disappeared. Sarah Casey, a travel agent who has never been anywhere, meets the mysterious Elston Rupp in a bar in New York's Hell's Kitchen. They walk out together and she is never seen again. Was she murdered, has she escaped from the city of loners, or has she simply disappeared?

'Weldon Rising' & 'Disappeared'

"Each play I see by Phyllis Nagy confirms me in the belief that she is the finest playwright to have emerged in the 1990s" (Alistair Macaulay, Financial Times) Weldon Rising: Downtown New York. The temperature is soaring. In the meat-packing district, Natty Weldon's lover is casually butchered by a homicidal homophobe. The witnesses do not intervene. Natty flees in terror, two lesbians watch from their apartment window and a flamboyant transvestite prostitute cowers in the street below. But life changes for them after the murder. Disappeared: Sarah Casey, a travel agent who has never been anywhere, meets the mysterious Elston Rupp in a bar in New York's Hell's Kitchen. They walk out together and she is never seen again. Was she murdered, has she escaped from the city of loners, or has she simply vanished? Nagy is "the laconic laureate of this spiritual wasteland" (Paul Taylor, Independent)

Phyllis Nagy

About

Books

Join the club