Books
Kate Atkinson

Abandonment (NHB Modern Plays)

A play about love, death, identity and evolution, from the best-selling and highly acclaimed novelist. Elizabeth, forty-something, childless, recently separated, just wants to be alone. She's moved into a converted Victorian mansion, alive with history, character, woodworm and rot. But worse than that she's besieged by invaders of the human kind. Her best friend, her sister, their mother, the builder and a photographer are all determined to make their mark. And a former inhabitant of the house, disturbed from her resting place by Elizabeth's arrival, revisits her own long-forgotten past. 'Atkinson has arrived at theatrical customs with a huge amount to declare' -Guardian 'Witty, intelligent and absorbing… terrific comic dialogue' -Scotsman
86 printed pages
Copyright owner
Bookwire
Original publication
2010
Publication year
2010
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Quotes

  • alyxtolehas quoted7 years ago
    ACT ONE
    Scene 1
    The living-room of a flat in a converted Victorian mansion. A large window. No carpet on the floor throughout. The place is in some disarray, packing-cases etc. A piano with old photographs on top of it and a candle. AGNES sits at the piano, playing ‘Home Sweet Home’. She stops abruptly, blows out the candle, and leaves.
    ELIZABETH (offstage). No, I have everything I need, it’s okay.
    ELIZABETH enters, carrying a cardboard box and switches on the light. SUSIE, also carrying a box, enters, followed by KITTY, carrying a bottle of champagne.
    KITTY. God it’s wild out there.
    SUSIE. I hope it’s not bad luck to flit in a storm.
    ELIZABETH. Stormy weather.
    SUSIE. Mother Nature’s in a stushie about something. You kept the curtains.
    ELIZABETH. It would cost a fortune to put up new ones. It’s such a big window.
    SUSIE. I do like big windows. It’s like . . . I don’t know, the outside world coming in.
    ELIZABETH. Not the inside world getting out?
    KITTY. You’re going to have to get double glazing. And central heating. And God knows what else. The place is a wreck. Has it had anything done to it in the past hundred years?
    ELIZABETH. Not much. That’s why I liked it.
    KITTY. It smells like someone died in here. They’re a strange colour, aren’t they? The curtains. What do you call that?
    SUSIE. Yellow?
    ELIZABETH. I think it’s chartreuse.
    KITTY. Chartreuse?
    ELIZABETH. Chartreuse.
    SUSIE. Old lady’s curtains.
    KITTY. What old lady?
    SUSIE. The one who lived here. The one who died here.
    ELIZABETH. The famous Miss Aurora
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