Caryl Churchill's plays always challenge the audience, but these two short pieces, which former Royal Exchange Artistic Director Sarah Frankcom has returned to direct, are also political, insightful about modern society and how people think and very often humorous, and she has assembled a terrific, very experienced cast to perform them.
Escaped Alone features four older women, Vi (Annette Badland), Mrs Jarrett (Maureen Beattie), Lena (Souad Faress) and Sally (Margot Leicester), who sit around on a grassy square in Rose Revitt's simple set design just chatting about random things, jumping from topic to topic as we often do in natural conversations. They could be friends meeting in the park or residents of a care home or something else—it isn't made clear and doesn't matter. There are fragmented reminiscences about TV programmes and what shops used to be on the high street, but we also learn that one of them has a phobia for cats, while another served time for manslaughter (but was it really murder?).
But even Churchill's most naturalistic-seeming plays, going back to 1982's oft-studied Top Girls, break through that wall of realism to do something more interesting. Here, some of the women leave the Pinteresque, seemingly insignificant chatter for monologues revealing their inner fears that are more like Beckett with their repetition and the speed and ferocity of delivery, lit by low lights dotted around looking like the sinister eyes of an alien monster (lighting designer Bethany Gupwell). Most of these are from Mrs Jarrett, growing in urgency and panic as she races to spit out a jumble of words suggesting environmental disasters and other man-made horrors that sound like some of the more extreme online conspiracies that are easy to laugh at but still pollute any public debate, although some sound only too plausible.
The interval comes 55 minutes into this double bill; the second play, What If If Only, is only half an hour in length.
The green square from the first half flies as the second begins to reveal an untidy living room and a character only referred to as "Someone" (Danielle Henry) talking to an empty armchair, although we soon learn that she is addressing her words to her dead partner and is struggling to cope with her grief. Enter Annette Badland—the only actor to be in both plays—as "Future", pleading with Someone to make them happen, hinting that she would be able to see her loved one again.
She is dismissed as "the ghost of a dead future that never happened" when Lamin Touray's "Present" arrives with a different perspective, then the members of the theatre's community group the Royal Exchange Elders provide a chorus of futures all asking to be made real. Finally, Bea Glancy is a rather sinister and arrogant "Child" who insists that she is the future that is going to happen. With this piece, I couldn't see much depth of meaning beyond the obvious surface symbolism—and the chorus lines, some delivered better than others, went on a bit long—but it's skilfully written and performed with its messages about grief and moving on.
There may be two plays, but it's still a shorter evening than most Royal Exchange productions, though it is a rewarding one that leaves you with much food for thought.