Written by Caryl Churchill

Directed by Joanna Bowman

Review by Anna Burnside

Tickets from £15.50

On a minimal set, a row of mottled legs end in well-used feet in comfortable sandals. Three women of bus pass-carrying age in mismatched chairs are drinking tea and discussing the things that absorb neighbours – the state of the local shops and the minutiae of each others’ lives.

Mrs Jarrett, not one of the trio’s intimates, spots them through a gap in the hedge and pulls up a four-folding seat.

The others josh and poke at their friends’ tender spots – and reveal everything from mariticide to ailurophobia (that’s killing your husband and a morbid fear of cats). In between Mrs Jarrett, who has shorter, more gnomic preferences, gets up behind them to deliver a series of dystopian monologues about the planet’s ongoing death agony.

Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone, a sensation at the Royal Court in 2016, has lost none of its punch. The mixture of Margaret Atwoodesque speculative fiction and Take the High Road is a potent and unexpected one. 

The cast of senior talent do it full justice. Irene MacDougall has the most to do, switching from DIY aversion therapy chat about cats to reliving the incident with the husband and the kitchen knife. Joanna Tope has the best monologue, describing a fear of felines who may sneak in through inadequately closed doors and hide anywhere, including a matchbox.

Blythe Duff describes the horrors of the near future in the same frank tones as she explains her dislike of seagulls. Her down-to-earth delivery of starving people watching breakfast on their iPads while the overweight sell themselves off, slice by slice, is the perfect juxtaposition to the garden gossip.

Caryl Churchill does all this in 50 minutes. It’s a hugely impressive piece of theatre.

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