When we
were in London last fall, we tried and failed to get tickets for the play Mosquitoes, produced by the National
Theatre. It was the final weeks for the production, and the shows were sold out.
It starred Olivia Colman,
best known in America as D.S. Ellie Miller in the crime drama Broadchurch and soon to take on the role
of Queen Elizabeth in The Crown.
So, I did
the next best thing. I bought the book form of the play.
Mosquitoes by Lucy Kirkwood is the
story of two sisters, Alice and Jenny. Alice is a physicist working at the CERN Hadron Collider
in Geneva, seeking to find the theoretical Higgs boson particle, and
her team is on the verge of a breakthrough. The most definitive thing you can
say Jenny is that she spends a lot of time on the internet, and especially
Google, and she is susceptible to every fad imaginable. One of those fads (or
widely believed bit of “fake news”) is that vaccinations cause autism. Jenny believes
it, like she believes almost every bit of non-science, and that belief leads to
a tragedy.
The
sisters couldn’t be more unlike. While they represent two philosophical perspectives
of science, they also represent two sisters who love each other but can’t stand
each other, or stand each other for very long. Alice’s teenage son Luke and
their mother Karen also play significant roles, but this is almost a stereotyped
dysfunctional family on several generational levels. And it’s headed for a major
conflict.
 |
| Lucy Kirkwood |
Kirkwood
is an actress, television screen writer, and playwright. Her television shows
include Skins
(2013), The Smoke
(2014), and The Briny
(2015). Her plays include Tinderbox
or, love amid the liver (2008), NSFW
(2013), Chimerica
(2014), Hedda
(2014), and The
Children (2017). She received a degree in English literature from the University
of Edinburgh, where she also performed for an improve comedy troupe and wrote
for the Edinburgh University Theatre Company. She is writer in residence at the
Clean Break
Theatre Company.
Mosquitoes is full of references to physics,
the work of the CERN collider, and the raft of pseudo-science that exists on
the internet. But science is only the filter through which we watch a family in
self-destruction, engaged in unthinking actions with serious consequences.
Top photograph: Joseph Quinn as
Luke and Olivia Colman as Jenny in
Mosquitoes at the National Theatre,
London.
3 comments:
Sounds interesting, especially with the physics angle. - Margy
The book does sound interesting, but I'm almost as interested in your news (to me) that that actress, who I remember from several other British TV shows I've seen, is going to Queen Elizabeth in the next two seasons of The Crown. I can't quite wrap my head around it, but I'm sure she will do a good job.
Sounds like one of those plots that you want to cover your eyes for so you won't see the destruction unfolding . . .
And I'm curious about the title.
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