![]() ![]() ![]() How is S supposed to reach for a future if her current loss is insurmountable? How do you breathe into a new life if the past has you by the throat?īell is terrific, able to convey multitudes of despair under the surface of deadened shock. F is soon followed by 16 other futures, equally determined to be made manifest and it becomes clear Churchill is interrogating the nature of grief and survival. Julie Forsyth, who played the role for Red Stitch back in 2019, made a symphony of chaos out of those two words.Ī character referred to in the program only as F (Lucy Ansell, precise and winning) appears and says she’s a ghost – not of S’s former partner but of a potential future. Her cry of “terrible rage”, a phrase repeated over and over again until it takes on an almost biblical force, is too mild by far. Those long monologues are too lenient, too temperate to convey the existential dread at their centre. Morse is lovely as Mrs Jarrett in those moments of gentle connection with the group, and she has an absolute mastery of the text’s musicality and structure. Lawrance gives a detailed and moving portrait of survivor guilt and Rubenstein is pitch perfect as a woman with a debilitating phobia of cats. ![]() ![]() Hood is excellent as the outwardly content Lena, a woman whose struggles with depression are underplayed until they rupture. ‘ Morse is lovely as Mrs Jarrett in those moments of gentle connection with the group.’ Photograph: Pia JohnsonĪnd yet these elderly women sit and talk, each one revealing a private horror, a way they’re not coping – and creep towards some kind of acceptance (although Churchill also suggests they’re keeping their heads in the sand). Economic systems mutate rather than merely founder, people indulge in bizarre forms of entertainment in lieu of hope, and all the while children suffer: “Some died of thirst others from drinking the water.” It’s awfully funny, and then it’s just awful. The vision Churchill presents is of a world hurtling to its own destruction that can do nothing but sell portions of its own demise back to itself. Churchill unleashes her rhetorical force to devastating satirical effect: “Chemicals spilled through the cracks in the money”, while “Obese people sold off strips of themselves to the highest bidder, and when they got hungry survived on their own rations.” Then every 10 minutes or so, Mrs Jarrett leaves the garden and comes downstage to deliver a monologue of societal and environmental collapse, one long litany of horrors so prescient and powerful it begins to make the afternoon chats look dangerously avoidant. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning There are a lot of ellipses, sentences that arrest midway, doubts and fears that slowly come to the surface. They talk about television series they’re watching, about the changing nature of the local shops, about their kitchens. In Escaped Alone, four women over 70 – Mrs Jarrett (Helen Morse), Sally (Deidre Rubenstein), Lena (Kate Hood) and Vi (Debra Lawrance) – sit in a garden and shoot the breeze, discussing their lives, their partners, their children and grandchildren. ![]()
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