'We're...
A man and a woman
Who've lost a child
Who first lost a child
And then... each other
Or maybe I should say:
Who first lost a child,
then themselves and then each other'

An extraordinary play that asks a simple question: is it ever possible to move on?

Poison by Dutch writer Lot Vekemans, in this English translation by Rina Vergano, had a critically acclaimed run in New York in 2016, and was premiered in the UK at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, in November 2017, directed by Paul Miller.

The original Dutch-language version of the play, Gif, was first performed at NT Gent/NL in December 2009.

About the Author
Lot Vekemans (born 1965) studied social geography at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands and trained at the Schrijversvakschool 't Colofon in Amsterdam, graduating in 1993. Since 1995 she has written numerous plays. In 2005 she received the prestigious Van der Vies Prijs for Truckstop and Zus van. Her play Gif (Poison) was awarded the 2010 Taalunie Toneelschrijfprijs for the best Dutch play staged that year. In 2012 her first novel Een bruidsjurk uit Warschau (A Bridal Gown from Warsaw) was published and nominated for the 2012 Anton Wachterprijs for the best Dutch/Flemish debut. The novel has been translated into Norwegian and German. In 2016 she received Germany's Ludwig Mullheims Theaterpreis, the first time the prize has gone to a foreign playwright. Her plays have been translated into fifteen languages and have been staged successfully in more than twenty countries around the world. Rina Vergano is a leading translator of Dutch and Flemish plays, as well as poetry, libretti and films, and specialises in work for younger audiences and musical theatre. She has translated around seventy plays by leading Dutch and Flemish playwrights (many award-winning in their country of origin) for performance and publication. She is also a theatre journalist and playwright.

Reviews

'Almost unbearably tense, delicate yet tough... Vekemans's writing is unflinching, its sparse language and aching silences charged with scarcely articulated pain... profoundly rewarding'

* The Times *

'A delicate and compassionate study of grief'

* Financial Times *

'Uncomfortable but compelling viewing... this is obviously a play about how we react to bereavement and is based on acute psychological observation. But, on a wider level, this is also a play about marriage and the way separation or divorce can never erase remembered intimacies'

* Guardian *

'An absorbing dance around the truth, in which tenderness and starkness alternate and the awkward cadences of debate are chasteningly authentic... considers the effects of grief, but instead of making pain appear poetic it portrays with sober precision the essential ordinariness of its two characters'

* Evening Standard *

'Painful, powerful... a minutely realistic look at the oddly colourless nature of grieving, and the grim concrete structures that 21st-century secular society builds around it'

* Time Out *

'Quietly unflinching... an almost forensic exploration of the hard, sharp edges of grief and loss... [has a] bruising truthfulness'

* The Stage *

'Searing... a tear-jerker'

* New York Times *

'Truly astounding'

* Broadway World *



Book Information
ISBN 9781848427105
Author Lot Vekemans
Format Paperback
Page Count 80
Imprint Nick Hern Books
Publisher Nick Hern Books