Carol does not love life. It takes her a lot of effort just to exist, but nobody understands her dark despair. Is she not beautiful? Is she not feeling well? Does she not have all that most people envy her for? So where does the depression come from? When she gives birth to a daughter, she promises her she will stay alive for as long as she can. But the disease won’t let her go. Years later, Anna barely manages to find her way in the world. She seeks refuge in drugs and an excessive lifestyle until she gives birth to a daughter. But her melancholy remains and soon leads her into the same catastrophe as her mother. Again, a few years later, Bonnie, now an adult, resolutely fights against this seemingly inevitable legacy. She makes a radical decision to put an end to the spiral. The British author Alice Birch tells the story of three generations of women in a dramaturgically sophisticated way: The story lines unfold simultaneously onstage, with each of the three protagonists in their own time zone. Focusing on the female gaze, the piece is composed like a fugue in which the individual narratives’ themes and motifs leave traces, are varied, and inscribe themselves in the female figures like the depression in their DNA, from which there seems to be no escape.

The Royal Court Theatre Production of ANATOMY OF A SUICIDE by Alice Birch, directed by Katie Mitchell, took place in 2017.

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