Osment Plays

This trilogy of 'Devon Plays' from the mid-1990s examines rural life and its claustrophobia with poignancy and humour. The Dearly Beloved won the 1993 Writers Guild Award; What I Did in the Holidays was nominated for the 1995 Writers Guild Award; and Flesh and Blood was produced at the Lyric Theatre, in 1996. Osment's trilogy of 'Devon Plays' draw on his background growing up on a farm in North Devon and were produced in the mid-1990s by Cambridge Theatre Company (Method and Madness). The Dearly Beloved (1993): 'Local boy made good comes back to visit his mother in a small West Country town where his presence brings home to his friends who stayed put the various ways in which their lives have failed ...you can't but be reminded of Chekhov at times.' Independent What I Did in the Holidays (1995): 'Osment's wonderfully dense and detailed study of fraught life in rurally non-swinging Britain. The play charts a painfully funny path through the casual everyday cruelties inflicted by the thoughtless young and selfish old. Osment's play is a delight.' Evening Standard Flesh and Blood (1996): 'Brilliant at evoking the nostalgia of Devon country life in a strange, recidivist family ...and in the elision between outdoor lust and indoor stuffiness.' Observer