Escaped Alone review, Royal Court

Sometimes you see a play and you don't have a clue what's going on. That's sort of the case with Caryl Churchill's beautiful short, Escaped Alone, which is fifty minutes of blistering writing, class acting, great humour, and... what's it about?  Well, it's about Mrs J, who's caught eavesdropping at a door in a fence, and is invited in to join the conversation. That's it. It is a tableau: four women in late middle-age, sitting in a surburban garden making small talk that, the more you listen, becomes redolent with undercurrents of dark deeds, rich with hidden torments, and tense with a fear of the unknown.


For Mrs J, it's a chance to escape the fears that stalk us all - pollution and famine, corporate greed and social decay, conflict, isolation, riot. Anxious thoughts blow through her head like a hurricane. They are lifted, smashed together, and strewn randomly in a soup of riotous language: First the baths overflowed as water was deliberately wasted to punish the thirsty/The wind developed by property developers started as breezes on cheeks and soon turned heads inside out/The chemicals leaked through cracks in the money/The hunger began when 80 per cent of food was diverted to TV programmes...

In the garden, Sally, Lena, and Vi, also have moments where they've Escaped Alone. There are funny and moving glimpses of their hidden darknesses in the everyday musings that are complete without ever being completed. It is a joyous dramatic construction. Is there, however, enough substance to keep us engaged fully?  For me, I'd have better enjoyed it in a small and intimate space like the Royal Court's upstair theatre which affords an instant connection between cast and audience.

In conclusion: The glorious Linda Bassett as Mrs J, leads an elegant cast. Kika Markham, Deborah Findlay, and June Watson, are beautifully understated and instantly recognisable as characters. James Macdonald's direction of Escaped Alone, makes a very still play feel fresh and active, and Churchill's eye for the small details in life will always thrill.


References
Royal Court Theatre, Escaped Alone, Tickets
Photograph by Johan Persson from Variety

Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, London SW3.  Run ends March 12