Perfect Days

An exploration of perfection, identity, and self-deception.

For audiences interested in psychological character studies.

About the Ebook

A funny, sad and truthful romantic comedy about beating the biological clock.

Barbs Marshall is a celebrity hairdresser in Glasgow. She is successful and well off, but she is 39 years old and almost deafened by the ticking of her biological clock. To make matters worse, her mother is a nag, her best friend is holding out on her, and her ex-husband has a new 22-year-old girlfriend. Then she meets a 26-year-old stranger who seems more than ready to oblige. But the complications are by no means over...

Liz Lochhead's play Perfect Days was first performed in August 1998 at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, winning a Fringe First Award.

The production was revived at Hampstead Theatre, London, in January 1999 and then transferred to the Vaudeville Theatre in the West End in June 1999.

Reviews

'People seldom write life-style comedies like Perfect Days for the stage anymore. The last scene has jokes so marvellous that they are greeted by rounds of applause as one blinks back the odd tear' Financial Times

'The mix of pithy patter and heartwrenching poignancy works a treat' The Times

'A huge popular hit' Daily Mail

Why You'll Love This Ebook

• Subtle examination of how we construct identity.
• Exploration of the gap between appearance and reality.
• Published by Nick Hern Books, leading contemporary theatre publisher.
• Theatre that reveals hidden depths.

About the Author

Liz Lochhead is a poet, playwright, performer and broadcaster.

Her original stage plays include Thon Man Molière, Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, Blood and Ice, Good Things and Perfect Days. Her many stage adaptations include Dracula, Molière’s Tartuffe, Miseryguts (based on Le Misanthrope) and Educating Agnes (based on L’École des Femmes); as well as versions of Medea by Euripides (for which she won the Scottish Book of the Year Award in 2001), and Thebans (adapted mainly from Sophocles' Oedipus and Antigone).

Her collections of poetry include Dreaming Frankenstein, The Colour of Black & White, A Choosing (Selected Poems), Fugitive Colours and True Confessions, a collection of monologues and theatre lyrics. She served a five-year term as Scotland's Makar, or National Poet, from 2011 till 2016, and was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, 2015. She won the Sunday Herald Scottish Culture Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017, and the 2023 Saltire Society Lifetime Achievement Award for her contribution to Scottish literature .

Publication Details

Publisher: Nick Hern Books

Publication Date: 26 February 1999

Print Length: 96 pages (Ebook edition)

ISBN (Ebook): 9781780012698

Format: Ebook

Language: English

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