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SPUR OF THE MOMENT ist ein komisches, so rührendes wie hartes Familiendrama um die 12-jährige Delilah, ihre Eltern und den Untermieter Daniel, in den Delilah heimlich verliebt ist und bei dem sie vor den immer stärkeren Konflikten zwischen Mutter und Vater Zuflucht sucht. Ihre Eltern sind so sehr damit beschäftigt, einander verbal zu verletzen, dass sie davon nichts bemerken, auch nicht, als es dem 21-jährigen Studenten schließlich immer schwerer fällt, Delilah nur als Kind wahrzunehmen...

Die Londoner Autorin Anya Reiss nahm mit 14 Jahren an einem Schreibkurs am Royal Court Theatre in London teil und rutschte sofort ins renommierte Young Writers Programme des Theaters (vormalige Absolventen sind u.a. Mike Bartlett, Polly Stenham und Lucy Prebble).
Reiss bildet nicht nur, wie es bei dem Debut einer 17-Jährigen vielleicht zu erwarten ist, den Kosmos der Tochter zwischen Kindheit und Jugend genau ab, sondern seziert auch erbarmungslos den Egoismus, die Unfähigkeit zur Kommunikation und die auseinanderfallende Beziehung der Erwachsenen.

Das Stück wurde 2010 zum "Best New Play" bei den renommierten TMA Theatre Awards gekürt.

Pressestimmen:

_"This astute dissection of a middleclass suburban family on the edge of implosion is merciless and meticulous. That Anya Reiss wrote it at 17 is gobsmacking. It’s a remarkably accomplished debut (...) This is a startlingly sophisticated play about growing up, parenting and the rampant social sexualisation that increasingly encroaches on childhood. And for Reiss it’s clearly just the start." (Time Out)

_"My jaw drops. This is the most accomplished debut from a young playwright I’ve ever had the pleasure to see. Anya Reiss was just 17 when she wrote this sharp-as-cat-claws drama about a 12-year-old only child falling head over heels for her dysfunctional family’s 21-year-old lodger. John Osborne was a hoary 26 before the Royal Court introduced him to the world. Reiss has yet to sit her A-levels. (...)
The tyro playwright inhabits different generational mindsets with equal emotional fluency, wit and insight. She reproduces the full entertaining horror of tween girls at their self-conscious, competitive worst (...).
More than that, though, we get a wrenching account of a modern marriage on the rocks, thanks to infidelity, insolvency and spiteful immaturity. (...)
This is a fresh, funny and blistering indictment of the way we live, parent and grow to maturity now. Whether you’re 17 or 70, go marvel." (The Daily Telegraph)

_"Wow! Writers over the lofty age of, say, 20, will find themselves watching this and weeping with envy. Anya Reiss, an 18-year-old A-level student, has produced a debut drama of astounding accomplishment which casts a clinical eye over the battleground of the middle-class family as witnessed from a pre-teen’s point of view.
(...) The adults might frustrate her but Reiss has nailed with uncanny accuracy the patterns of adult rows, with their tedious trigger words and circular arguments." (Evening Standard)

_"It’s one thing to balance a drama about fighting parents with the inflamed sensitivities of their 12-year-old daughter, who is about to have sex with their 21-year-old lodger. It’s quite another to write it as a comedy. (...)
It’s a seriously impressive debut, all the more startling because playwright Anya Reiss is just 18 years old. (....)
Having raised the temperature to the point of comic nervousness with everyone in the house behaving very unwisely, Reiss creates a scene thrillingly rife with undercurrents. Delilah, her parents and Daniel are all on a sofa in the darkened sitting room, failing to behave well while watching a DVD. Under the cover of her parents’ mutual self-obsession, Delilah suddenly kisses Daniel on the mouth and the dramatic heat skyrockets. Ensuing scenes are a younger, reverse spin on “American Beauty,” but with greater danger. (...) With events threatening to spiral out of control, the laughs now catch in the audience’s throats (...). There are toxic levels of tension — How far will they go? Will Daniel’s girlfriend find out? What will her parents do when the truth comes out? The comic speed of the action — eavesdropping, snatched corridor conversations, exquisitely timed entrances — never comes, however, at the expense of the sense of (ir)responsibility that stalks the play. Indeed, as the mood turns ever darker, that governing sense is increasingly embodied by the characters, all of whose thoughts and motives are made grippingly legible by Herrin’s actors.
Intricate, inappropriate family behavior may be the stuff of soap opera, but Reiss’ narrative grip, for the most part, ensures it’s considerably more than that. At its best, the play keeps audiences on a knife-edge poised between fascination and horror. That balancing act suggests a degree of detachment that indicates Reiss is not a one-hit wonder but a real writer." (Variety)

_"There was a hoo-ha when Polly Stenham’s debut, That Face, written when she was only 19, was staged at the Royal Court. Here comes another first play by uncannily talented teenage playwright, the 17-year-old Anya Reiss. Like Stenham, Reiss takes a gimlet-eyed look at family dysfunction among the middle classes. (...) And Reiss’s play (...) displays a breathless intelligence, and sinks us deep into a collapsing family story." (The Sunday Times)

_"Anya Reiss is 18. She’s waiting for her A-level results. And her first play has just opened at the Royal Court. It’s vivid and spiky and brought into quick-moving life in Jeremy Herrin’s excellent production.?(....)
Reiss’s ear for dialogue is so sharp, and her scenes from domestic life so recognisable, that she’s already had to explain that this isn’t a piece of autobiography. (...)
A play that’s part of a wave lapping over the British stage: that of extreme young talent." (The Observer)

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