Escaped Alone

Four women in their 70s deliver their best performances in a new Caryl Churchill play at a theatre about to turn 60
Georgina-Brown-colour-176The Royal Court Theatre, famous for being a writers’ theatre and dragging drama out of the drawing room and into the kitchen, is, as the rather nauseating cliché goes these days, 60 years ‘young’ this year. And how best to celebrate that with a brand-new play by Caryl Churchill (herself 77 years ‘young’) about four women all in their 70s.

In Escaped Alone, nosy parker Mrs Jarrett (the wonderful Linda Bassett), in terrible leggings and harshly dyed hair, gate-crashes a little gathering where three women she vaguely knows because they are all local, are drinking tea in the garden. A children’s car lies on the grass. The women’s wedding rings glint in the afternoon sun as they chat about what they’ve seen on the telly, their children, new hips and the way the neighbourhood and times have changed over the years. They mourn the fact that the old corner shop has gone and the mini Tesco used to be the fish-and-chip shop and a whole shop would cost 17 shillings, which is God knows what in new money.

Then there’s a blackout, the stage is framed by a fizzling orange light and Mrs J stands in the darkness, detailing an apocalyptic place where life as we know it now has been taken to its conclusion with resulting cannibalism and flood, mostly horrific except when it’s funny: ‘The hunger began when 80 per cent of food was diverted to television programmes.’

Churchill has the most remarkable ear for the threads and patches of women’s chatter, absurd when taken out of context. ‘I like a table,’ says Kika Markham’s Lena, and it’s all she needs for us to know that she’s mildly despondent about the fact that people rarely gather around a table to eat together as they once did. In the same way as her utterance: ‘Barney’s never out of his phone’ and ‘They don’t add up any more’, reveals so much of what she thinks about technology. June Watson’s Vi is less gloomy: ‘Whole worlds in your pocket,’ she says. The small talk conceals much bigger stuff.

Mrs Jarrett doesn’t know the three as well as they know each other so she’s startled to learn that Vi, once a hairdresser, stabbed her husband to death and spent six years inside. Sally (Deborah Findlay), an ex-GP, has a horror of cats. Lena says she wants to go to Japan but, reading between Sally’s lines, the idea of Lena getting to Tesco would be a triumph.

James Macdonald’s pitchperfect production captures light and darkness and every nuance in between. These splendid women seem rather more resilient than our fragile planet.

Until 12 March at the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs at the Royal Court Theatre, London SW1: 020-7565 5000 or www.royalcourttheatre.com