Synopsis
Meet Carol Greene. She carries stillness like a second skin, always walking the edge between tenderness, submission and disappearance.
Meet her bright, reckless daughter Anna, returned from university, lost in a whirlpool of addiction and yearning, struggling to live big.
And meet Anna’s daughter, Bonnie Harp, a city-bred doctor who nurses others while quietly festering her inherited ache, negotiating the life handed out to her. Three generations of women. And the people who yearn to be a part of their lives.
John, Carol’s husband, a train driver with calloused hands and a kind heart, holding together what love keeps trying to pull apart. Jamie, a documentary filmmaker, listening more than he speaks, camera in hand, catching truth even when it hurts. Tough outside, tender inside, Jo, a fisherperson, fierce, funny, loyal, swearing she’s “okay” when she rarely is.
Their lives play out simultaneously, sometimes in parallel, sometimes as collisions.
Like with John’s sister Emma, a whirlwind of chaos showing up at the right times to say the wrong things. Or her businessman-husband Toby, slippery, shady, just a bit. And their daughter Daisy, full of late-night cigarettes, a friend who brings light to rooms that have forgotten how to breathe. And then there are those who touch their lives for the space of an indelible breath.
Bonnie’s colleague Dr. Tim, a father stitching love through guilt and confusion, never believing he’s doing enough. Carol’s schoolmate Laura, floating between cities, carrying people’s stories at 30,000 feet while struggling to land her own. Karen, an ambitious estate agent & Esther, heartbroken, love-hungry yet compassionate. Tim’s wide-eyed daughter, inheriting what no one means to pass on. Bonnie’s young, alive neighbour full of everything the adults have forgotten. Dan, hopelessly in love with Anna, who works, protects, hopes, fails and still shows up. Luke, who loves awkwardly, forgives easily, trying to build something that might just last.
Anatomy of a Suicide uncoils slowly, blurring time and memory, moment after moment revealing a sliver of someone’s past, a fragment of someone’s ache. Together they build a world. Tender, fractured and unbearably, unashamedly human.
Director’s Note
Some plays hold a mirror too close. Anatomy of a Suicide was that for me. The title has always stayed with me. It is meticulously chosen by Alice Birch. Anatomy. Not tragedy not confession. Both poetic and precise. The word anatomy reframes suicide not as a singular tragic act but as something dissected, studied, and composed of parts like the emotional, social, biological, generational, even linguistic.
To direct it was to perform an autopsy of feeling. To look beneath the skin of silence, to see what memory leaves behind in the body. Anatomy of a Suicide is not about death. It is about what remains. The anatomy of survival, of holding on, of finding language again.
Every day in this room felt like walking through fog which is familiar, heavy, beautiful in its ache. The text opened wounds I’ve carried for years, and yet, strangely, it kept offering light. I found myself breaking in new ways, but also learning that breaking can be a form of breathing. The rehearsal room had people thinking, feeling, holding one another through a story that demands courage. There was laughter, exhaustion, care, and rare honesty. Everyone, be it actors, musicians, technicians, designers held this work with tenderness and discipline, building something fragile and immense.Sometimes art doesn’t save us. It just reminds us that we have already survived. I think that’s what this process was. A long remembering. I have walked close to that edge before. Twice. To return to it through art, this time with language, light, and an extraordinary group of people beside me, has been both brutal and redemptive. Grateful for this room. For this company. For the privilege of still being here to tell this story.
About the Writer
Alice Birch is an award-winning British playwright and screenwriter known for her formally inventive writing and her exploration of family, relationships, power, identity and contemporary social issues.
Her play Anatomy of a Suicide premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2017, directed by Katie Mitchell. Spanning three generations of women, the play explores motherhood, mental health, love, loss and the ways experiences can reverberate across generations. In 2018, Birch won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for the play.
Birch is also the recipient of the Arts Foundation Award for Playwriting and the George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright. Her other notable theatre works include Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again and [BLANK], while her screenwriting credits include Normal People, Succession and Dead Ringers.
