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Review: Attempts on Her Life at Hen & Chickens Theatre

"a shifting mosaic of voice, not a linear narrative"

by Ke Meng
June 11, 2025
Reading Time: 3 mins read
Attempts on her Life Image credit Claire McHugh

Attempts on her Life Image credit Claire McHugh

Four Star Review from Theatre WeeklyAttempts on Her Life is Martin Crimp’s post-structuralist contemplation on self, identity, and the very existence of being—or, in such a context, becoming?

Consisting of seventeen fragmented scenarios, the play revolves around a symbolised character “Anne” (or Annie, Anya… whatever you like), who is variously described as a plethora of identities: a porn star, a terrorist, a car model, a civil war victim, and even a machine. Crimp must have drawn his food for thought from thinkers like Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze, who greatly influence the play’s form, language politics, and their concept of subjectivity. In this play, there is no linear narrative—just a shifting mosaic of voice.

Directed by Sam Smithson and produced by Not Quite Ready Productions, this revival attempts to capture the essence of Crimp’s thoughts with a cast of four who brilliantly and carefully balance the nuance of the play’s political plea and its multi-layered philosophical reflection, avoiding an overtly divergent interpretation of media manipulation—a common misreading of Crimp that simply attributes all foul to “the evil media.”

       

Instead, the production uses different forms of discursive language such as conference speeches, rehearsal room dialogues, karaoke and nightclub songs, as well as academic seminars. These encounters, like most of Crimp’s dialogues, lack certain “logic,” but they lay bare the arguments and contradictions surrounding Anne’s elusive identity, underscored by projected footage, pornographic video clips, and voiceovers. Is every porn star truly willing to become a porn star? Be cautious with your answer.

To some extent, Crimp’s lines can be difficult to follow as the voices are overlapped and interrupted—much like Derrida’s vision of language: an eternal resistance to the clarity of definition (in fact, for Crimp, definition is insofar synonymous with violence) and categorisation. Sometimes we see the actor lip-syncing the footage; other times we hear a speech in English with simultaneous interpretation in another language; last but not least, the four actors speak at once, creating a soundscape of an abundance of signifiers, in which the signified no longer matters. Speech, in the script of Crimp, becomes an act of shallow performance.

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Not only does Attempts on Her Life subvert theatrical conventions of coherent narrative and consistent characters, it also questions the very notion of the individual ego. How is it relentlessly eroded by consumerism, global capitalism, and technological advance? Crimp’s text merely functions as poetic provocation, reminding us that when identity is celebrated as something fixed as truth, there’s definitely the need to revisit this play. Not Quite Ready Productions steps in to meet that need.

Listings and ticket information can be found here

Ke Meng

Ke Meng

Ke Meng is an independent scholar, freelance writer and a theatre educator in London. She used to work as an assistant professor in University. Ke writes vastly for a number of different platforms including A Youngish Perspective, Shanghai Theatre and The Initium.

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