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Plays 1: Blavatsky's Tower / Gabriel / Silence / Loveplay
Gabriel : 'A richly themed, enthralling new play.' The Times
Silence (winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn award): ' Silence is a beaut. Buffini is deliciously skilled at crafting lines.' Financial Times
Loveplay : 'Delightfully quirky, funny and touching. A hit if ever I saw one. Buffini has an appetite for history, and the most beguiling of dramatic voices.' Daily Telegraph
Dinner : 'A cracking black comedy that has you laughing uproariously one moment and jumping with shock the next . . . Dinner offers a delicious feast of comedy at its most heartless and macabre.' Daily Telegraph
Blavatsky's Tower : 'A refreshingly dizzying perspective on that cornerstone of dysfunction - the family.' Time Out 'A truly remarkable play. Buffini is a startingly original voice and an outstanding talent.' What's On
Silence (winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn award): ' Silence is a beaut. Buffini is deliciously skilled at crafting lines.' Financial Times
Loveplay : 'Delightfully quirky, funny and touching. A hit if ever I saw one. Buffini has an appetite for history, and the most beguiling of dramatic voices.' Daily Telegraph
Dinner : 'A cracking black comedy that has you laughing uproariously one moment and jumping with shock the next . . . Dinner offers a delicious feast of comedy at its most heartless and macabre.' Daily Telegraph
Blavatsky's Tower : 'A refreshingly dizzying perspective on that cornerstone of dysfunction - the family.' Time Out 'A truly remarkable play. Buffini is a startingly original voice and an outstanding talent.' What's On
- GenresPlays
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
About the author
Moira Buffini
28 books65 followersMoira Buffini (born 1965) is an English dramatist, director, and actor.
She was born in Carlisle to Irish parents, and studied English and Drama at Goldsmiths. She subsequently trained as an actor at the Welsh College of Music and Drama.
For Jordan, co-written with Anna Reynolds in 1992, she won a Time Out Award for her performance and Writers' Guild Award for Best Fringe play. Her 1997 play Gabriel was performed at Soho theatre, winning the LWT Plays on Stage award. Her 1999 play Silence earned Buffini the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for best English-language play by a woman. Loveplay followed at the RSC in 2001, then Dinner at the National Theatre in 2003 which transferred to the West End and was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Comedy.
Buffini wrote Dying For It, a free adaptation of Nikolai Erdman's classic, The Suicide, for the Almeida in 2007. She followed it with Marianne Dreams, a dance play with choreographer Will Tuckett, based on Catherine Storr's book. Her play for young people, A Vampire Story was performed as part of NT Connections in 2008.
Buffini is said to advocate big, imaginative plays rather than naturalistic soap opera dramas, and is a founder member of the Monsterists, a group of playwrights who promote new writing of large scale work in the British theatre. She has been described by David Greig as a metaphysical playwright. All her plays have been published by Faber.
Buffini is also a prolific screenwriter. In 2010 her film adaptation of Posy Simmon's Tamara Drewe was released followed by her adaptation of Jane Eyre for BBC Films and Ruby Films in 2011. The script appeared on the 2008 Brit List, a film-industry-compiled list of the best unproduced screenplays in British film. It received nine votes, putting it in second place. Buffini also adapted her play A Vampire Story for the screenplay of Neil Jordan's film Byzantium released in 2013.
She took part in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty Six for which she wrote a piece based upon a chapter of the King James Bible.
- Wikipedia
She was born in Carlisle to Irish parents, and studied English and Drama at Goldsmiths. She subsequently trained as an actor at the Welsh College of Music and Drama.
For Jordan, co-written with Anna Reynolds in 1992, she won a Time Out Award for her performance and Writers' Guild Award for Best Fringe play. Her 1997 play Gabriel was performed at Soho theatre, winning the LWT Plays on Stage award. Her 1999 play Silence earned Buffini the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for best English-language play by a woman. Loveplay followed at the RSC in 2001, then Dinner at the National Theatre in 2003 which transferred to the West End and was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Comedy.
Buffini wrote Dying For It, a free adaptation of Nikolai Erdman's classic, The Suicide, for the Almeida in 2007. She followed it with Marianne Dreams, a dance play with choreographer Will Tuckett, based on Catherine Storr's book. Her play for young people, A Vampire Story was performed as part of NT Connections in 2008.
Buffini is said to advocate big, imaginative plays rather than naturalistic soap opera dramas, and is a founder member of the Monsterists, a group of playwrights who promote new writing of large scale work in the British theatre. She has been described by David Greig as a metaphysical playwright. All her plays have been published by Faber.
Buffini is also a prolific screenwriter. In 2010 her film adaptation of Posy Simmon's Tamara Drewe was released followed by her adaptation of Jane Eyre for BBC Films and Ruby Films in 2011. The script appeared on the 2008 Brit List, a film-industry-compiled list of the best unproduced screenplays in British film. It received nine votes, putting it in second place. Buffini also adapted her play A Vampire Story for the screenplay of Neil Jordan's film Byzantium released in 2013.
She took part in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty Six for which she wrote a piece based upon a chapter of the King James Bible.
- Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 13, 2022
Blavatsky's Tower: Really quite an odd play, but very interesting. Blavatsky's Tower tells the story of an extremely insular family who live in the top floor of the lone sky scraper in a small town, a building which the father, Hector Blavatsky, designed and had built. Near the opening of the play Hector is dying, but because he has devoted himself to a life of suffering he refuses to visit a doctor or have one in his home. But when the oldest daughter, Audrey, brings Dr. Tim Dunn in it throws the house into chaos. Like Hector, neither of Audrey's siblings ever leave their penthouse, and Hector's death and the eruption of the Doctor in their lives throws the isolated family into chaos.
https://youtu.be/BRZIXZwQ2dc
Gabriel: A WWII play about a family on Guernsey during the Nazi occupation. Estelle, the 10 year old daughter, prays for a resistance that will destroy the German invaders, while her mother, Jeanne, tries to get along with their officers as best she can, protect her family, and hide the true identity of her Jewish daughter-in-law, Lily. Their lives are disrupted when a young man washes up on the beach with no identity and (when he finally recovers consciousness) no memory of who he is. They name him Gabriel. The play focuses on a kind of chess game between Von Pfunz, a German officer, and Jeanne.
What I find really interesting and enjoyable about the play is the way Buffini threads in discussion of philosophy and aesthetics, particularly about the potential for poetry to find and reveal truth, and ultimately the potential for self-delusion to obscure that truth. Gabriel and Von Pfunz discuss truth, poetry, violence, and force, while Jeanne, Lily, and Estelle try to act as they see fit, either based on a pragmatic desire to survive or an ethical ideal.
https://youtu.be/Cp4RlXG7ufU
Silence: People who regularly read my review might know that I love history plays, and I particularly love medieval history plays. So Silence was a real treat for me. The play is set during the reign of one of my favorite Anglo-Saxon kings, Aethelred Unraed, and presents a fictionalized account of how he came to be married to Emma (or Ymma) of Normandy, one of the most powerful Dark Age queens in Europe. The play does a lot with liminality, as identities shift and change, passing through various religious, gender, sexuality, and political positions. This is one of the most interesting elements of the play for me, because this issue of liminality is so central in multiple guises. The oddly ambiguous lesbian relationship between Silence and Ymma is central, and this relationship is problematized by a kind of Shakespearean cross-dressing, in which a female body dressed in men's clothing becomes a male body. Also central as the fluid shifts of religious identity, as the Norse pagan Silence converts to Christianity and then back to paganism, the priest Roger grapples with doubts about Christianity, and Ethelred embraces an apocalyptic mission. There really are no stable, set identities in the play, which in an interesting way fits perfectly with the late 1990s, on the verge of the new millennium.
https://youtu.be/mr2Vj9orIHo
Loveplay: A really cool postmodern exploration of time and space, through the mechanism of one space passing through time. This play explores the various love relationships (broadly understood) that happen in one one place from Roman times, the Anglo-Saxon Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the 1930s, today, etc. Consisting of a series of short scenes, the play imagines that love/sex/desire shows up in the same space in different guises across time, from the Roman soldier and his prostitute, to the gay Victorians, to the free love hippies, to dating services. And as the play moves through these different times and different relationships the space becomes increasingly haunted by the relationships of the past.
https://youtu.be/HSkeQOsif5A
https://youtu.be/BRZIXZwQ2dc
Gabriel: A WWII play about a family on Guernsey during the Nazi occupation. Estelle, the 10 year old daughter, prays for a resistance that will destroy the German invaders, while her mother, Jeanne, tries to get along with their officers as best she can, protect her family, and hide the true identity of her Jewish daughter-in-law, Lily. Their lives are disrupted when a young man washes up on the beach with no identity and (when he finally recovers consciousness) no memory of who he is. They name him Gabriel. The play focuses on a kind of chess game between Von Pfunz, a German officer, and Jeanne.
What I find really interesting and enjoyable about the play is the way Buffini threads in discussion of philosophy and aesthetics, particularly about the potential for poetry to find and reveal truth, and ultimately the potential for self-delusion to obscure that truth. Gabriel and Von Pfunz discuss truth, poetry, violence, and force, while Jeanne, Lily, and Estelle try to act as they see fit, either based on a pragmatic desire to survive or an ethical ideal.
https://youtu.be/Cp4RlXG7ufU
Silence: People who regularly read my review might know that I love history plays, and I particularly love medieval history plays. So Silence was a real treat for me. The play is set during the reign of one of my favorite Anglo-Saxon kings, Aethelred Unraed, and presents a fictionalized account of how he came to be married to Emma (or Ymma) of Normandy, one of the most powerful Dark Age queens in Europe. The play does a lot with liminality, as identities shift and change, passing through various religious, gender, sexuality, and political positions. This is one of the most interesting elements of the play for me, because this issue of liminality is so central in multiple guises. The oddly ambiguous lesbian relationship between Silence and Ymma is central, and this relationship is problematized by a kind of Shakespearean cross-dressing, in which a female body dressed in men's clothing becomes a male body. Also central as the fluid shifts of religious identity, as the Norse pagan Silence converts to Christianity and then back to paganism, the priest Roger grapples with doubts about Christianity, and Ethelred embraces an apocalyptic mission. There really are no stable, set identities in the play, which in an interesting way fits perfectly with the late 1990s, on the verge of the new millennium.
https://youtu.be/mr2Vj9orIHo
Loveplay: A really cool postmodern exploration of time and space, through the mechanism of one space passing through time. This play explores the various love relationships (broadly understood) that happen in one one place from Roman times, the Anglo-Saxon Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the 1930s, today, etc. Consisting of a series of short scenes, the play imagines that love/sex/desire shows up in the same space in different guises across time, from the Roman soldier and his prostitute, to the gay Victorians, to the free love hippies, to dating services. And as the play moves through these different times and different relationships the space becomes increasingly haunted by the relationships of the past.
https://youtu.be/HSkeQOsif5A
April 14, 2023
Suggested by a friend from our theatre company along with Book 2 which I have just begun. I am impressed by the variety of styles across the four plays. Buffini certainly does not concern herself with any challenges for the director or crew - most of these are tricky to stage and need considerable investment for realism or considerable immagination for a more surreal approach. Gabriel was my favourite but Loveplay was highly entertaining. It just ran out of steam when we should get a Tinder generation following on from the dating agency era. Very cleverly constructed. 3.4 from me but rounded.
December 10, 2017
Dark, comedic, daft. Wonderful read.
Read
October 14, 2023University reading
July 23, 2016
Four well written plays...
Blavatsky's Tower is a very weird love story of sorts. Strange quasi distopian fantasy that seems to be a social critique and philosophical treatise...interesting.
Silence I saw at KCACTF. Awesome play about life in the middle ages. A kind of gender bending love story.
Gabriel. Really well written exploration of truth, good and evil. Powerful. Set during WWII.
Loveplay. Another variation on Schnitzler's La Ronde only this time it takes place over 2,000 years and is set in a single physical location. Very clever and romantic.
Blavatsky's Tower is a very weird love story of sorts. Strange quasi distopian fantasy that seems to be a social critique and philosophical treatise...interesting.
Silence I saw at KCACTF. Awesome play about life in the middle ages. A kind of gender bending love story.
Gabriel. Really well written exploration of truth, good and evil. Powerful. Set during WWII.
Loveplay. Another variation on Schnitzler's La Ronde only this time it takes place over 2,000 years and is set in a single physical location. Very clever and romantic.
Shelved as 'part-read'
July 17, 2012Just finished reading Silence, and I loved it! I thought it was hilarious. Looking forward to starting Gabriel and the others :)
Read
March 28, 2015Silence: flawed, but excellent.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews