THE UK premiere of Purple Heart, by Clybourne Park writer Bruce Norris, brings the Gate Theatre's Aftermath season to a fitting close, director Christopher Haydon says

BRUCE Norris, the award-winning writer of Clybourne Park, has made his name puncturing the contented bubble of his largely liberal, middle class audiences.


Purple Heart, in which a grieving widow struggles to come to terms with her husband's death in Vietnam, has many similarities with the hit West End show, according to director Christopher Haydon.

But he describes the tragicomedy, only the third of Norris' plays to reach UK shores, as a much more intimate piece, with the emphasis very much on tragedy rather than comedy.

"Purple Heart is a very personal play and Bruce has been particularly resistant to people reviving it in the past, so it's a real honour he's letting us produce it here," said Haydon.

"There are plenty of parallels with Clybourne Park. Both plays have a tragicomic tone, are meticulously structured and take a satirical look at certain social mores.

"But while Clybourne Park is a laser-guided missile directed at its liberal middle class audience, this feels less like an attempt to pick at the scabs of the audience's middle class guilt."

Norris' stock has risen considerably since he wrote Purple Heart in 2002, mostly thanks to the success of Clybourne Park, a caustically comic look at race and class in America.

But, with the Pulitzer Prize-winner's latest play The Low Road about to open at the Royal Court, the political landscape has changed just as dramatically in that time.

A decade ago, the US had just invaded Afghanistan, fuelled by the public outrage following the 9/11 attacks.

Today, with conflict still smouldering in Afghanistan and Iraq, attitudes have changed considerably, making Purple Heart even more relevant, according to Haydon.


"Although there's a domestic setting to the play, it's certainly a powerful critique of American warmongering," he says.

"It's set towards the end of the Vietnam War, when body bags were coming back in their tens of thousands and disillusionment was widespread.

"Obviously American casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan don't compare but there's now a similar sense of disillusionment with those campaigns. Body bags are coming back and families are having to deal with the loss of loved ones.

"I think Purple Heart gives you access to what's happening within families not just in the UK and America, but in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, which are losing loved ones to war and violence."

Purple Heart marks the end of the Gate Theatre's Aftermath season, looking at the reverberations of war and uprisings once the dust has settled.

Haydon came across the play while in New York last March and decided it was the perfect companion piece to Trojan Women, which played to positive reviews before Christmas.

"Both plays look at the way war and violence impact on women's lives," he says.

"Whereas Trojan Women looked at the epicentre of that violence, this looks at how the ripples of a conflict several thousand miles away can have an equally devastating impact.

"Women are hugely under-represented on stage and I think it's important to find plays that tell their story, which both Trojan Women and Purple Heart do brilliantly."

Purple Heart is at the Gate Theatre, in Notting Hill, until April 6. Tickets, priced £10-20, are available at www.gatetheatre.co.uk or from the box office on 020 7229 0706.