Latest news with #CarylChurchill
Forbes
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
A Glass Girl, Gods, Ghosts And An Imp. Inside Caryl Churchill's Universe
Deirdre O'Connell in GLASS. KILL. WHAT IF IF ONLY. IMP., written by Caryl Churchill and directed by ... More James Macdonald, at the Public Theater Joan Marcus This past November when Deirdre O'Connell was sent the script of a quartet of Caryl Churchill's short plays that would be performed together, there was no question that she had to be a part of the ensemble. 'I knew that my life was about to be swallowed up with the plays. There was the brilliance of the writing. And it's rare to feel there is only mining and nothing incomplete about it,' says the Tony-winning actor about the mosaic of themes and characters in Churchill's plays Glass. Kill. What If If Only. IMP. 'All I have to do is surrender to it and try to understand how it needs to be done. Because it is perfect.' All vastly different, yet linked together in subtle ways, the plays feature a girl made of glass who has to navigate her world, a God on a white cloud giving her take on humanity, a bunch of ghosts who have a keen insight on mortality and two kissing cousins, (who don't kiss), who may have an escaped IMP from a bottle running amok in their living room. Directed by James Macdonald, who often collaborates with Churchill, the four one acts are presented together for the first time and playing at the Public Theater. Often considered one of the world's finest playwrights, Caryl Churchill's work delves into sexual politics, identity, power, human instincts and why we behave the way we do. A pioneering, boundary pushing playwright, she blows the lid off convention and creates her own forms. (From left): John Ellison Conlee, Adelind Horan, and Deirdre O' Connell in GLASS. KILL. WHAT IF IF ... More ONLY. IMP Joan Marcus Oskar Eustis, the Public Theater's artistic director calls Churchill the most influential living playwright in the English language. 'For over 50 years she has been creating utterly unique, unpredictable plays that combine formal experimentation with deep social engagement. She's a profoundly political playwright whose work is always aesthetically compelling; she's a brilliantly innovative artist whose work tackles the deepest and most difficult issues we face,' writes Eustis in the show's playbill about the Public Theater's collaboration with Churchill that has spanned nearly five decades. 'She isn't the most commercially successful writer we have; indeed, she's never aimed at that kind of success. But her influence on generations of playwrights is unequalled in the Anglo-American theater.' O'Connell is part of an ensemble featuring Japhet Balaban, Ruby Blaut, John Ellison Conlee, Adelind Horan, Maddox Morfit-Tighe, Cecilia Ann Popp, Sathya Sridharan, Junru Wang, Ayana Workman, Kyle Cameron, Orlagh Cassidy and Anya Whelan-Smith. When asked about why she believes Churchill's work has endured all these decades O'Connell points to the depths of her writing. 'She has a very clear headed way that she looks at the world combined with this acknowledgement of its mysteries,' says O'Connell of the plays that are running at the Public Theater through May 25. 'There is the glee she has as a writer. And she offers that pleasure to the artist making it and, hopefully, to the world watching it.' Jeryl Brunner: In the one act IMP you play Dot, a former nurse who is nursing her own bad back and stays put in her reclining armchair. While in Kill you take on the role of 'Gods' and are perched on a cloud delivering an epic monologue. Both pieces are extremely different. What is that like for you? Deirdre O'Connell: They are each remarkable in their own way and so utterly different from each other. One kind of earns you the ability to do the other. Kill , in particular, was terribly intimidating. On the page, there is very little punctuation. It's just four single spaced pages of ferocious writing about death, war, families and cultures. It's about how the world creates an impossible situation for each generation and tries to move out of it, Yet it's impossible to do, because you are birthed into a legacy of some kind of violence and revenge fantasy. It seemed very prescient , yet she had written it around six years ago. I guess it will never stop feeling like this is the exact story that needs to be told right now. I was terrified reading Kill . I thought, Can I just do IMP , the fun British comedy? But of course, no, you can't. You have to be able to do both things. And the fun British comedy wouldn't be the same thing without the Gods in Kill , and the Gods wouldn't be the same thing without the fun British comedy. Brunner: Were you able to connect with Caryl Churchill at some point? O'Connell: A little bit. She did some Zoom meetings with us from London as a group when we were beginning rehearsal. Imagine social anxiety. We didn't know each other yet. There was all of us in a room on one screen, and then there was her and her cat, by herself in London. She was very nice. It was like we all came over for tea and she was such a great hostess to us. I did not sit down and have in-depth question answer sessions with her. We had our director James, who has worked with her so much and understands her writing so well and had directed these plays before [in the United Kingdom] a few years ago. It was funny because it was long ago enough so when I would ask him very specific questions, like: 'How did you solve this problem?' But he would say, 'I don't remember.' So we were starting from scratch, but with someone who had already figured out and knew that worked. It was as if we were working with a magician who solved the tricks but had to teach them to you. Brunner: How has doing the play impacted you? O'Connell: It might be something about the nature of the dark and the light of the task, but it makes me feel extremely happy. I don't always feel that way. Even when I'm in something I really like, feel excited and challenged. This is a particular kind of happiness. And even sometimes when I have the dark moments of the soul, I remember how this makes me incredibly happy. As dark as the play is, it's also extremely pleasurable to do. Brunner: Why do you think that is? O'Connell: I believe that has a lot to do with Carol and James. James is incredibly gentle as a director, but he also puts out breadcrumbs through the forest for you. They are these brilliant, bright breadcrumbs and you just have to follow them. He is so gentle that anytime you start to bite down, he says, 'No, no, no. You don't have to freak yourself out about this.' He has a way of not freaking out as a director, in terms of having faith that the soup will brew up into the thing it needs to be. James trusted us a lot and let us build. But at the same time, he was guiding with such a gentle hand. So I felt very held by him while feeling a lot of freedom inside a very tight structure. (From left:) Adelind Horan, Ayana Workman, Sathya Sridharan and Japhet Balaban in Glass. Joan Marcus Deirdre O'Connell Courtesy The Public Theater
New York Times
17-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Review: Caryl Churchill Times Four Makes an Infinity of Worlds
A girl made of glass. A god — or, really, all of them. Ghosts, but of the future. An imp who may be trapped in a bottle. Just another day in Caryl Churchill's world. The arrival of new work by Churchill is like the arrival of a new theorem in a supposedly settled body of knowledge. 'Cloud Nine' (1979) explored gender as colonialism; 'Escaped Alone' (2016) domesticated the apocalypse. 'Drunk Enough to Say I Love You' (2006) reframed the alliance of Britain and the United States as a sloppy date. Clones and multiverses are part of her world. With a mathematician's precision, she posits ways of thinking about the universe and its inhabitants that, even when baffling, give more dimension to our experience of both. Her latest investigations take the form of a collection of four one-act plays at the Public Theater, under the portmanteau title 'Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp.' Written separately over the last few years, each is pointed enough on its own: short and edgy. But together, in a splendid and surprisingly emotional production directed by James Macdonald, a frequent Churchill collaborator, they are so sharp you hardly feel them slicing your skin. 'Glass' is the most literally shattering. The life of a girl made of the substance, who lives on a mantelpiece for safety, is encompassed in 13 minutes. Her mother frets over her, her brother brags about her, her mantelpiece neighbors — an old clock, a plastic dog, a painted vase — compete with her. (She may be pretty, the clock says, but he's useful.) Soon the girl (Ayana Workman) meets a flesh-and-blood boy (Japhet Balaban) who is entranced by the transparency of her feelings: He can see straight into them, with no need for words. When his own feelings are spoken, in the form of whispers we do not hear, the express bus to tragedy departs. The way intimacy opens to loss is a theme here; the way abstractions become characters is a miracle. Somehow, it takes just a moment to adjust to the bizarre setup and the ensuing complications. (The mother warns that if the girl goes out for a walk with the boy, she had better wear Bubble Wrap.) Nor do we trouble ourselves that the production makes no attempt to literalize the figurines. They're just us. Likewise just us: the gods represented by one actor in 'Kill.' I say one actor, but Deirdre O'Connell is so singular, she's plural. On a puffy white cloud (sets by Miriam Buether), in a cream and gold chenille lamé suit (costumes by Enver Chakartash), she looks down on the ancient parade of human viciousness with amusement and despair and every feeling in between. Not many actors could parse — let alone make both funny and awful — a maniacal, 12-minute monologue that's basically a mixed grill of Greek and Roman sagas. A typical, barely punctuated sample: 'She's committed to being her husband's enemy taking his longtime enemy as her lover, her husband's cousin who wants all that family dead, she's his enemy as soon as he kills their daughter cutting her throat on the altar to get wind for sailing to his brother's war' — on it goes through a thousand horrid demises. Bring a classicist with you to sort out the sources, though it doesn't matter. To the gods, it's all gossip, delivered by O'Connell in the manner of a Southern barfly facing last call. Representing the divine as a debauchee is a brilliant choice, demonstrating a key Churchillian theme: All evil is human evil. 'It's not our fault,' O'Connell says at one point, voicing the gods. 'We don't exist.' The human need to fabricate other worlds and blame ours upon them is also the subject of the third play, 'What If If Only.' A man (Sathya Sridharan) so mourns the loss of his wife that he opens a metaphysical door to an afterlife. But the being who then enters isn't in fact his wife; she's a ghost of 'the dead future,' one of the innumerable possibilities of who she might have become. All the man must do to revive her, the being explains, is 'make me happen' — but, he wails, he doesn't know how. I say he and she for the mourner and the mourned, because that's how this production has cast them, but Churchill doesn't specify. (In the play's online premiere, the mourner was female and her late spouse male.) The story doesn't care about that; it cares about the larger truth that anyone who has suffered a great loss, which is to say everyone, will understand immediately: We can't get them back. There are only more-or-less unwanted substitute futures, suggested in a swishing soundscape of voices designed by Bray Poor. Surely it's no coincidence that the play appeared shortly after Churchill's husband of 60 years, the lawyer David Harter, died in 2021. 'Glass,' 'Kill' and 'What If If Only' make up the first half of the Public's program, along with two charming intermezzos: an acrobat (Junru Wang) performing hand balancing maneuvers on tiny podiums called canes; and a juggler (Maddox Morfit-Tighe) executing flourishes, spins and traps with clubs. In front of a gold proscenium with flashing chasers (lighting by Isabella Byrd), these acts suggest a kind of vaudeville, so fitting for Churchill's evolving take on tragedy as comedy, and vice versa. After an intermission, that thought is further revised in 'Imp.' Two 60-ish cousins, but not the kissing kind, share an apartment somewhere in England. Dot (O'Connell) has unspecified back problems that keep her in her easy chair. Jimmy (John Ellison Conlee) has ambitions toward fitness but sneakers not quite up to the task. Into their pleasantly carping ménage come two newcomers: their niece, Niamh (pronounced 'neeve'), from Ireland, and Rob, a local homeless man. I have not seen a Churchill work in the naturalistic domestic dramedy vein before, and it's fascinating. In 12 swift scenes that take up an hour, she easily achieves the plot density of premium cable, with its regular revelations, its ruptures and reunions. Niamh (Adelind Horan) and Rob (Balaban) begin a relationship that worries Dot and pleases Jimmy. Things progress and devolve in a broadly satisfying, almost familiar way. What makes this pure, strange Churchill is off to the side. It's that bottle, near Dot's chair, which she keeps as a kind of talisman or threat. Is there really something in it? What if it got out? Does it (as Dot claims) grant wishes, especially evil ones? Or is Dot, with her sharp tongue and tendency toward havoc, herself the imp? These questions, always physically present onstage, derange the domestic dramedy and get at the heart of Churchill's worldview. There is always something in the bottle. It did get out. Wishes, especially evil ones, are granted. Yes, Dot is the imp, and so are we all.
Telegraph
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Inside the return of the most controversial play of the 21st century
To say that the 2009 premiere of Seven Jewish Children, Caryl Churchill's play that covered decades of Israeli history in 10 minutes, caused controversy is an understatement. Subtitled A Play for Gaza, it was hastily written in response to Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli military's incursion into the Palestinian territory shortly after Hamas took power. As many as 1,400 Gazans died, as did 13 Israelis during the three-week conflict. Churchill wrote seven gnomic scenes – starting with the Russian pogroms of 1903 and the Holocaust, then onto the foundation of Israel and up to the present – in which Jewish adults debate how much an unnamed and unseen female relative should or should not be told about violence in the world. Each line in the poetical script starts with 'Tell her' or 'Don't tell her'. The first scene includes the line 'Don't tell her they'll kill her' as, we deduce, the family is hiding from persecution. Later, at a time of heightened Israeli-Palestinian tensions, the debate becomes 'Tell her they want to drive us into the sea / Tell her they don't'. By the end of the play, however, Churchill portrays one of the Israeli speakers as bloodthirsty and vengeful: 'Tell her we're the iron fist now, tell her it's the fog of war, tell her we won't stop killing them till we're safe.' Publicising the play at the time, Churchill said: 'Israel has done lots of terrible things in the past, but what happened in Gaza seemed particularly extreme.' The backlash was swift, and the play is perhaps the most controversial mounted this century. Following its debut at London's Royal Court, Seven Jewish Children was widely criticised for being anti-Semitic. Howard Jacobson, the Booker Prize-winning novelist, wrote that Churchill's 'wantonly inflammatory piece' was an example of 'Jew-hating pure and simple' because, he said, in it 'the Jews drop in on somewhere they have no right to be, despise, conquer, and at last revel in the spilling of Palestinian blood'. Dozens of prominent British Jews – including Dame Maureen Lipman and Lord Janner – signed a letter to The Telegraph saying that the work 'demonises Israelis by reinforcing false stereotypes' and 'portrays Israeli parents as inhuman triumphalists who care little about anything except their children's feelings, and who teach them that Arabs are subhuman and must be hated'. The BBC, meanwhile, declined to adapt the play for radio, citing its need to remain impartial. The Royal Court had caused similar controversy in 1987 by programming Perdition, the Ken Loach-directed play based on an Israeli controversy in which a Hungarian-born Jewish lawyer was accused of collaborating with the Nazis. The play was cancelled the day before its first preview. Churchill denied the claims of anti-Semitism, and said that her play 'shows the difficulty of explaining violence to children. In the early scenes, it is violence against Jewish people; by the end, it is the violence in Gaza'. The controversy has had a very long tail. In recognition of her life's work, Churchill was named the recipient of the European Drama award by the Schauspiel Stuttgart, one of Germany's foremost theatres, in April 2022 but it – and the €75,000 (£65,000) prize – was withdrawn in November that year after the jury said it had been 'made aware of previously unknown information'. This included Seven Jewish Children – which can 'be regarded as being anti-Semitic' – and Churchill's support for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Churchill, now 86, specified when she wrote the play that it can be read or performed anywhere, so long as performances did not charge an admission fee but that a collection be made for the Medical Aid for Palestinians charity. A new adaptation of the play, in the form of a short film by a 23-year-old Israeli-American, is sure to stir up the old controversies, especially given the violence in the Middle East over the past 18 months. Omri Dayan, who has been based in London for the past five years, became aware of the play on a visit to Israel shortly after Churchill's award was rescinded and, he says, 'I immediately felt drawn to it and I just couldn't get it out of my mind'. 'It was a surprise for me in many ways, because my Judaism, or me being Israeli, has never touched my work,' Dayan tells me. 'I've worked with my family before, and it's part of who I am, but I've never wanted to do something about that, because I felt that it, in some ways, would box me in, and it just didn't feel relevant to my art, and that suddenly this was because I am Jewish and because I am the son of Israeli immigrants this is a story I want to tell.' Brian Cox, the Succession star who is never knowingly understated, serves as executive producer. Dayan says the actor, who is a long-standing supporter of Medical Aid for Palestinians, will help encourage people to watch the film – and 'he won't be scared of the controversy around it'. Dayan, a graduate of the MetFilm School in West London, is fully aware of how controversial the play is but says that the criticism of it is misplaced. 'I think that there's a pattern of anything that is critical of the Israeli government being called anti-Semitic, and it builds a smoke screen behind which we can't hear voices of opposition inside Israel and outside Israel,' he says. 'And I think that the way that the world reacted to this play is a prime example of that. 'Unfortunately, anything that touches on Israel and Palestine is political,' Dayan adds. '[The play is] completely about empathy and about love and understanding and yet it is political, it's showing how a nation that was formed from a place of trauma and survival can, as a society, develop a mentality of hatred towards another. That is inherently political.' Others disagree. 'It is striking that, at a time of surging antisemitism, people would feel the need to adapt a play that was accused of just that when it was first performed,' says Stephen Silverman of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, Britain's leading charity dedicated to exposing and countering anti-Jewish hatred. 'There's a reason that the blood libel has been so enduring: because so-called artists keep perpetuating it. No wonder that, according to our polling, less than half of British Jews feel welcome in the UK. Cultural institutions have a societal responsibility not to promote division and hatred.' Dayan shot the film in the summer of 2023 with a crew of 50 – which he says included Israelis and Palestinians – who volunteered their time. The cast includes Dayan's father, Ami, and his grandmother, the Israeli actress Rivka Michaeli. Although many may see Dayan's film as a response to the events on and after October 7, 2023, before the credits roll a line flashes on screen to clarify that it was made before the Hamas terror attacks and Israel's retaliation in Gaza. Dayan was in the editing room on that fateful day, and was so moved that he 'needed to step away for a little bit from the edit'. 'I needed time to… because I don't want the film to be a reaction to October 7, it's not, we didn't make it as a reaction, and I don't want to take advantage of the trauma,' he says. 'And yet it's a piece that is very relevant to how we take trauma and don't let it infect our futures in that sense, and history repeating itself in that sense. 'I can't imagine the pain and the horror. I was not in Israel, I never lived in Israel and I feel that pain and that horror,' Dayan adds. 'I know people there who know people who were killed on October 7, and who have friends and family who are hostages. It's unimaginable that trauma, and the generational impact that trauma will have. But the film is about taking these moments and rather than turning them into hatred, turning them into empathy for the other, and seeing the reaction to October 7 play out in a completely opposite way, and seeing that trauma being used to justify hatred to the other, is exactly what I'm hoping we can start stepping away from.' Dominic Cooke, the Royal Court artistic director when the play premiered in 2009, says that Dayan's film is a 'terrific achievement' and 'catches the visceral power of the original play whilst finding a fresh visual form to express it on screen'. He adds: 'Caryl's vision of an Israel trapped in cycles of trauma is sadly more pertinent now than ever. I hope Omri's film gets to be seen by a wide audience thereby stimulating debate and understanding about the roots of the current disaster in Gaza.' As per Churchill's wishes, cinemas cannot charge for entry to see the film. A fully-booked premiere will take place at the Prince Charles Cinema in London's Soho on March 31, with a charity collection. It will be made available for free on YouTube the following day, with other screenings planned both in the UK and America. Dayan is fully aware that his film will spark outrage. 'This is something I ask your readers: people will have preconceptions about this. So many people who are against the film are against the film because they've read something about the play. They haven't seen the play, they haven't read the text, they haven't seen the film,' he says. 'I ask people to watch first and then to discuss, put aside the preconceptions for a moment and watch the film. 'If you think that there's a moment in the film where the characters aren't treated with understanding, with humanity, with love, with respect, then tell me, because I think that every word of this play comes from a deep and true understanding, not only of history, but also of psychology, and it comes from empathy, and it comes from love.'
The Guardian
16-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Escaped Alone and What If If Only review – a dislocating Caryl Churchill evening of two halves
Escaped Alone (2016) is first in this double bill of short plays by the veteran dramatist Caryl Churchill, directed by Sarah Frankcom, the Royal Exchange's former artistic director. Three women occupy chairs on a square of grass; Churchill's text states they are 'at least 70'. A fourth woman (similar age) introduces the action: 'I'm walking down the street…' Seeing the others, she enters the garden and is greeted as Mrs Jarrett. At the close of the play, Mrs Jarrett leaves the others as she found them and, walking out through the auditorium, tells us: 'And then I said thanks for the tea and went home.' In between, the four pass the time chasing conversation topics, jibing, sharing memories, singing a song from their youth. Their disjointed dialogue feels stage-artificial, lacking the character-revealing crafting of close observers of suburban life (Alans Ayckbourn and Bennett, or Victoria Wood, for instance). The characters' inner selves are presented in monologues that offer cliches of older women. Two are fearful (cats, open spaces; Margot Leicester and Souad Faress, respectively), one is haunted by memories (of a dark deed – moving writing powerfully delivered by Annette Badland). Mrs Jarrett is of the 'doomed, we're all doomed' type (Maureen Beattie, deploying broad Scots to effect); her seven solos deliver verbal visions of dystopian apocalypse that sound like schlock-to-the-max blockbusters (backed by a rumbling soundscape from Nicola T Chang). The pleasure of the 55-minute performance lies in the acting. What If If Only (2021), at about 30 minutes, is more interesting and more emotionally engaging, centring on the grief of an individual following the death of their partner. A young woman (Danielle Henry) enters a sitting room strewn with books, records, pamphlets (revealed in a coup de théâtre by designer Rose Revitt, not to be spoiled by description). She looks through a box of photographs, talks to an empty chair – not empty to her, who sees in memory the lover who has died. She is visited by the ghosts of futures that might have been, the personifications of 'what if, if only' possibilities. First, and most insistent, is self-proclaimed 'brilliant future' (Badland), followed by a crowd of clamouring Futures (excellent community cast). Having shaken them off, she is confronted by the Present (Lamin Touray), who introduces her to, and invites her to choose, Child Future (Bea Glancy – wickedly vivid and a talent to watch). At the end, as at the beginning, the mourner looks through photos and talks to the empty space in the chair. Externally, nothing is different; yet this well-crafted, life-opening drama, beautifully directed and performed, has subtly changed us all. Star ratings (out of five) Escaped Alone ★★★ What If If Only ★★★★ Escaped Alone and What If If Only are at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, until 8 March
