Attempts On Her Life Martin Crimp

Understanding Martin Crimp's Attempts On Her Life

Attempts On Her Life is a play by British dramatist Martin Crimp that premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in 2001. It won the Evening Standard Award for Best Play. The work is structured around a series of assassination attempts on a character simply called The Girl, who represents something larger than an individual person. Crimp wrote this as a critique of how media and politics construct threats. The Girl is meant to be a trade unionist or activist figure, someone who becomes a symbol rather than a person. Each scene shows a different attempt on her life, but the attempts are often interrupted, delayed, or rendered absurd. The assassins are bureaucratic, hesitant, and oddly polite about their violent intentions. I first encountered this text while studying contemporary British drama. What struck me was how Crimp refuses to let the audience settle into any comfortable emotional position. You are not supposed to feel sympathy for The Girl because she is never fully characterized. She appears in almost every scene, but we learn nothing about her interior life. This was intentional on Crimp's part.

The play operates on the principle that political violence becomes routine when we stop seeing individuals as individuals. The assassins discuss logistics the way office workers discuss quarterly reports. They check schedules, clarify contracts, and worry about paperwork. This banality is where the horror lives.

Structural Approach in the Play

Crimp uses a modular structure. Each scene functions as a self-contained unit, but together they build a cumulative argument about how societies normalize violence. The scenes range from professional hitmen to ideological extremists to confused teenagers. What ties them together is their relationship to The Girl as an abstract concept rather than a human being. The language is one of the most distinctive features. Crimp writes dialogue that sounds like corporate speak, legal documents, or customer service interactions. Characters discuss murder with the same register they would use to discuss dental appointments. This stylistic choice forces the audience to confront how language itself can sanitize violence. One practical challenge I faced when staging excerpts from this play involves the pacing. The interruptions and delays that Crimp builds into each scene can make performances drag if actors do not find the rhythm. The humor needs to land without undermining the underlying seriousness. I found that working with directors who understand dark comedy helps enormously. The tone must stay consistent even when scenes shift from one type of assassin to another.

Themes and Political Context

The play emerged in the early twenty-first century, a period of heightened anxiety about terrorism and political violence. Crimp was responding to how governments and media create enemies out of abstract categories. The Girl could be anyone, and that is exactly the point. She represents all activists, all dissenters, all people who threaten established power structures. Crimp does not provide easy moral positions. The assassins are not cartoon villains. Some are competent professionals. Others are incompetent but well-meaning. A few seem almost sympathetic in their confusion. This complexity prevents audiences from dismissing the play as simple propaganda. The work also examines class dynamics in Britain. Many of the assassins come from working-class backgrounds. They see themselves as ordinary people doing ordinary jobs. Crimp suggests that violence is distributed across social classes, not concentrated among obvious outliers. This observation remains relevant decades after the play premiered.

Performance Considerations

Staging Attempts On Her Life requires careful attention to tone. The play balances between comedy and horror, between satire and genuine dread. Directors must help actors find the right register for each scene. Too much comedy undermines the political critique. Too much seriousness turns the play into melodrama. Set design tends toward minimalism. The Girl's world is empty space where violence could happen anywhere. Projections or multimedia elements sometimes appear in productions, but Crimp's text works without them. The language carries the weight. Directors should resist adding spectacle just to fill the stage. One issue I noticed in student productions is the temptation to characterize The Girl too heavily. She appears briefly in each scene, usually as a target rather than a person. Some directors add backstory or motivation. This misses Crimp's point. The Girl exists as a function within the play's argument, not as a psychological portrait. Keeping her abstract preserves the work's critical edge.

Why This Play Remains Relevant

Attempts On Her Life continues to be performed and studied because its concerns have not diminished. Political violence, media manipulation, and the erosion of empathy remain pressing issues. Crimp's examination of how societies distance themselves from the consequences of violence feels increasingly urgent. The play challenges audiences to recognize their own complicity. We watch The Girl face endless attempts on her life and feel our discomfort grow. But we are also complicit in systems that treat people as abstractions. Crimp does not offer solutions, but he forces us to confront uncomfortable truths about how we think about violence and power. I recommend reading the text before watching any production. Crimp's language rewards close reading. The jokes work differently on the page than on stage. The political arguments emerge more clearly when readers can pause and reflect. The play is not easy, but it is rewarding for anyone willing to engage with its difficulties.