My Heart's a Suitcase & Low Level Panic

Two modern feminist classics by a writer who was amongst the extraordinary generation of British female playwrights to emerge in the 1980s.

'McIntyre's first Royal Court play, Low Level Panic, [is] a deft and funny all-female three-hander, set in a bathroom... The play was directed in 1988 by Nancy Meckler with Caroline Quentin, Lorraine Brunning and Alaine Hickmott in the principal roles. The panic of the title is provoked by omnipresent pornography and a sexual assault on one of the characters. But the play's originality and boldness lie in its treatment of the characters' complex relationships with their own sexual fantasies, their bodies and each other.

'In McIntyre's next play, My Heart's a Suitcase, which had its premiere at the Royal Court in 1990, the sense of invasion felt by the two female central characters is dramatised by characters called Pest and Luggage, who burst unpredictably through the walls of the seaside flat in which the play is set. ... McIntyre's theatrical imagination [is] matched by an unsentimental but sympathetic portrayal of women trying to make sense of their place in a threatening and intrusive world.

'Low Level Panic won the Samuel Beckett award, while My Heart's a Suitcase earned McIntyre the Evening Standard's most promising playwright award, with both plays quickly entering the feminist theatre canon.' David Edgar, The Guardian

Clare McIntyre (1952-2009) was amongst the extraordinary generation of British female playwrights who emerged in the 1980s. Her best-known plays, including Low Level Panic (Royal Court Theatre, London, 1988) and My Heart's a Suitcase (Royal Court, 1990; winner of the Evening Standard and London Drama Critics awards for Most Promising Playwright), are now considered modern feminist classics. She also had an extensive career writing and acting for film, radio and television.