Nudity, Sex, Suicide: A Review of 'Never Land' by Phyllis Nagy

Never Land, written by Phyllis Nagy in 1998, is set in a small town in France, following an ambitious yet heartbroken family through their dramas and tribulations. Henri’s desire, above all else, is to live and work in England, and we see him get closer and closer to the realisation of this dream, before it is plucked out of his fingers, sending him and the whole family into a downward spiral of depression and self-loathing. This is, of course, played in tandem to a socio-economic crisis that leaves the family in crippling debt and despair. At the same time, the daughter Elisabeth’s abusive fiancé, Michael, ends the relationship in a chaotic, full-blown speech, destroying Elisabeth and causing her already fragile emotions to crack and burst free from her heart in the overblown climax of the play. The text itself is simultaneously haunting and tumultuous, as a play about extreme heartbreak should be. But, Nagy does not play to your expectations. She completely removes all boundaries, deciding to write the characters in the most vulnerable positions imaginable: nudity, sex, suicide. And because of this, their experiences feel coherent, real and blatantly truthful. Nagy has taken a dramatic, melancholic idea of a far away town, of rather unlikable people, of a dire and perhaps fanciful situation, and placed it alongside complete and utter bareness on stage. I have never met more broken characters, characters who, for some unfathomable reason, still have beauty within them. The scenes are striking and simple words on a page, descriptions and directions, have truly stuck with me in the many months that I first read this play. I feel I can still hear Elisabeth's wails and Anne's beautiful monologue is one I intend to present for my LAMDA exam. It is abstract. It doesn't follow the natural laws of writing. It dips and flips, throwing both Anne and the audience into flashbacks, bittersweetness, wonderment and devastation. This is not unlike Never Land itself. A play that totally bewilders and yet still manages to uphold sense and a good strong message about the world.