Macmillan doesn’t give us a villain or a hero. Both characters are right. And both are terrified. It is a 75-minute panic attack about modern morality. If you have ever lain awake at 3 AM wondering if your recycling bin is full enough or if you should have children, this play is your reflection.
This relentless pace mimics how anxiety actually feels. Time collapses. We worry about the next five minutes and the next fifty years simultaneously.
Just when you think Lungs is a political play about the environment, it pivots. It becomes a play about grief. About the things we say to hurt the ones we love. About the silence that exists after a mistake that cannot be unmade. lungs by duncan macmillan
The Weight of Air: Why Duncan Macmillan’s “Lungs” Will Leave You Breathless
Lungs won’t leave you with a solution. It won’t tell you whether to have the baby or save the planet. Instead, it leaves you with the feeling of holding your breath underwater—that pressure in your chest, the ringing in your ears, the desperate need to break the surface. Macmillan doesn’t give us a villain or a hero
Go see it. But bring tissues. And maybe a Xanax. Have you seen or read Lungs ? What did you think of the ending? Let me know in the comments below.
Duncan Macmillan has written a play for our age of anxiety. It is small in scale (two people, no props) but infinite in scope (the entire future of the human race). It is a 75-minute panic attack about modern morality
At first glance, the setup sounds almost deceptively simple. A man and a woman—simply named W and M—stand in a bare space (no set, no props, just two microphones). They are in an IKEA. They are having a tense, whisper-argument about whether to have a child. She wants one. He is terrified. But within ten minutes, you realize this isn't a play about baby names or nursery colors. It is a terrifying, beautiful, and devastatingly honest calculus of love, guilt, and the planet we are leaving behind.