The Last of the Duchess (NHB Modern Plays) - Softcover

Nicholas Wright's new play is about illusions: versions of truth. Which is not to suggest pretentiousness, or lack of delighted laughter. The joy of the play is in the riveting unpeeling of true selves...Magnificent. --The Sunday Times

Fascinating and entertaining...Fusing drama, comedy and mystery into an agreeably economical two hours...Keeps the tensions and intrigues bubbling nicely. --West End Whingers.

Richly comic but also unexpectedly moving... This is also a play that raises deeper issues, among them the public's prurient fascination with the famous and notorious and the sheer unpitying ruthlessness of writers who get the scent of a good story...All this makes for a rich dramatic mix (that) deftly combines sharp comedy with a frosty sense of mortality and grief...a comic gem that also sounds deeper, darker notes of fear and the vanity of human wishes. --The Daily Telegraph

This deep and funny new play...Marvellously light on its feet, effortlessly conveying the story, conjuring up the eccentricities of life at the edge of celebrity...A witty, thought-provoking and rather elegant entertainment. --The Arts Desk

Nicholas Wright's new play engages with an intriguing subject, modish enough to have inspired a film by Madonna...Tinged with nostalgia it's also witty and original...Has trenchant things to say about the allure of celebrity and the way all of us weave fictions around ourselves. --Evening Standard.

Based on Caroline Blackwood's book of the same name, Nicholas Wright's new play about the last days of the life of Wallis Simpson recalls what it was to have been an icon in a world with very few icons; it is also an elegy for a lost age, and for lives rendered barren by the emptiness of exile. The play received its world premiere at Hampstead Theatre, London in 2011, directed by former National Theatre artistic director Sir Richard Eyre.