Linda Bassett, Deborah Findlay, Kika Markham, and June Watson
at the Royal Court
Photo by Johan Persson
030 – Escaped Alone by Caryl Churchill
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The setting seems ordinary enough. Four women of a certain age sitting in a suburban garden chatting over tea. They talk of the usual things: children and grandchildren, the local shops, the latest TV series and the jobs they used to do. But each of them harbours darker thoughts that simmer below the social surface, prompting moments of private or sometimes more public anxiety.
The peace of these scenes in the garden is even more disturbed when from time-to-time one of the women steps away from the others to tell us about shocking, even surreal, disasters that have struck the world. What world is she describing? How does she know about what she is telling us? Is it some warning about an apocalypse to come?
This is the unsettling yet unforgettable dramatic landscape of Caryl Churchill’s stunning play Escaped Alone. The play was first produced at the Royal Court Theatre in 2016, and was revived again in 2017 with the same cast, before transferring to New York. This is the first Caryl Churchill play that we’ve covered, and I’m delighted finally to be doing one of her titles, not least because in our play poll listeners and guests have recommended Caryl Churchill more than any other author. Her body of work contains many of the most innovative works in the catalogue of modern drama. She is renowned for her relentless experimentation in form, as well as her political consciousness and the precise poetry of her language. Her work has an unfailing power to dramatize the anxieties that dominate our contemporary world, and in the case of Escaped Alone to present an extraordinarily prophetic vision of a world overcome by collective disaster.
I’m joined in this episode by an expert in Caryl Churchill’s work, Elaine Aston. Elaine is a Professor at the Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Arts at Lancaster University, and the author of two books on the work of Caryl Churchill.
The film production of Escaped Alone will be streamed online at 7:30 pm each evening for five nights from 2-6 September 2021. Click here to purchase tickets from the Teddington Theatre Club.
Elaine Aston
Elaine Aston is a Professor at the Lancaster Institute of Contemporary Arts at Lancaster University, and the author of a monograph on Caryl Churchill which she has updated in three editions published by Northcote House, as well as the editor of the Cambridge Companion to Caryl Churchill and the Cambridge Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights from Cambridge University Press. Elaine is acclaimed for her work on theatre research and feminism, publishing several books on Feminist Theatre Practice, and currently serves as the President of the International Federation for Theatre Research.
Recommended Play
Elaine recommended Hang by debbie tucker green.
The Footnotes to our episode on Caryl Churchill’s prophetic play Escaped Alone include further thoughts on Churchill’s uncanny prescience, as well as some background on the experience of filming the play during lockdown.
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113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Published 24th August
Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.
112 – Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
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David Mamet’s modern American classic, Glengarry Glen Ross, is a blistering commentary on the cut-throat reality of the American dream, and its poisonous impact on those who have bought into the myth and machismo of that dream. The play had its world premiere in the small Cottesloe theatre at the National Theatre in London in September 1983, and was first performed in New York the following year, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Mamet also wrote the extended screenplay for the star-studded 1992 film version.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play was playing at the Old Vic theatre in London, with an all-female cast. This is a particularly provocative idea, because one of the primary themes of this play is masculine identity, and the salesmen in this Chicago office do not hold back in their display of machismo.
To explore Mamet’s unflinching slice of 1980s dog-eat-dog capitalism, I am joined by arts journalist Mark Lawson.
111 – The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht
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Bertolt Brecht’s ‘gangster spectacle’, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, is both an exuberant and funny piece of theatre, and a chillingly topical political satire. Set in the 1930s Chicago of Al Capone, Brecht presents a parody of the rise of Hitler through the character of the gangster Arturo Ui. The play is a universal cry for vigilance against the rise of unscrupulous, populist leaders who threaten democratic societies and global peace.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play by the Royal Shakespeare Company was playing in Stratford-upon-Avon, starring Mark Gatiss as the title character.
I am delighted to be joined by both the show’s translator, playwright Stephen Sharkey, and by Brecht scholar, Professor Tom Kuhn, to guide us through Brecht’s political parody.
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