"Escaped Alone": Fears, Femininity, & Prisons

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Sunday, 19 February 2017 17:03

Written by Jack Angstreich

Surely one of the more significant events in American dramatic arts this year will prove to be the U.S. premiere of director James Macdonald's Royal Court Theatre production of Caryl Churchill's remarkable new play, Escaped Alone, which runs at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Harvey Theater from February 15th through the 26th. One of the most important contemporary playwrights, Churchill's avant-garde work has been presented to extraordinary effect in New York City in the past fifteen years or so in Macdonald's memorable stagings: the minimalist A Number at New York Theatre Workshop in 2004 starring Sam Shepard and Dallas Roberts; the impressive Manhattan Theater Club revival in 2008 of the feminist Top Girls, featuring Mary Beth Hurt, Elizabeth Marvel, Martha Plimpton and Marisa Tomei; and the wonderful and unsungLove and Information at the Minetta Lane Theater in 2014.

The apocalyptic, sometimes hilarious Escaped Alone is more challenging and elusive than any of those. Mrs. Jarrett (Linda Bassett), who periodically narrates a dystopian future in unsettling monologues, sees three old English ladies having tea in the afternoon and joins them. The entire fifty minutes consists of their conversation and various, startling asides. Sally (Deborah Findlay) has an obsessive terror of cats. Lena (Kika Markham) is agoraphobic. And Vi (June Watson) has killed her husband in self-defense and served six years in prison.

A highlight of the play occurs when the cast unexpectedly breaks out into an a cappella version of the great Crystals song, "Da Doo Ron Ron". Macdonald elicits an admirable balance between stylization and naturalism from his superb cast and it was a special thrill to see Markham—still beautiful in her seventies—the gorgeous young star of François Truffaut's magnificent "Two English Girls". It's difficult to speculate after only one viewing about the meanings behind this curious, abstract but fascinating work but I strongly urge readers to see it.

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