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Stunning Never Let Me Go stage version asks the big questions

Kazuo Ishiguro’s heartbreaking dystopian novel of young love and organ donation has been superbly adapted for the stage

By Chris Simms

22 November 2024

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Kathy (Nell Barlow, left) and Ruth (Matilda Bailes) in Never Let Me Go

Hugo Glendinning/Bristol Old Vic

Written by Suzanne Heathcote
Based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro
Directed by Christopher Haydon

Bristol Old Vic until Saturday 23 November, then Chichester Festival Theatre from 26 to 30 November.

It took Kazuo Ishiguro a long time to write his best-selling novel Never Let Me Go. He had an idea about young people in a love triangle facing their mortality, but it just didn’t work for him until he finally placed the story in an alternative, dystopian version of 1990s England.…

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