So close… Far Away, Donmar Warehouse

Caryl Churchill’s plays are so diverse it’s difficult to pin down her style other than a brutal honesty mixed with strong characterisation and healthy humour. This play was first produced in 2000 and its vision of a Britain involved in a war on home turf and with martial law and public execution part of the entertainment of a ruthless single state, is far more frightening twenty years on. Maybe we just don’t see things as clearly as this playwright or we just delude ourselves harder but the hostile environment on display is all too believable.

The play is short – 40 minutes - as well as, ahem, being nasty and brutish and, personally, it has the aftertaste of a novella when there was perhaps more to say. It’s based on three sequences and whilst the first has the biggest shock value and the second has the most spectacular set-piece, the final section plays a little flat in comparison especially when the humour and horror that is balanced so well before this point breaks down to some plain daft ploys about animals and the weather being involved in the war. I get the point but not the continuous joke.

Jessica Hynes (Photo, Johan Persson)

The performances are very strong throughout and not least from young Sophia Ally as young Joan who features in the first section as she examines a large metal block that occupies the central stage. The block is raised revealing her Auntie Harper (Jessica Hynes) hard at work sewing; this is a time of make do and mend and more besides as the inquisitive Joan has already discovered on her first day staying out in the country. Joan has seen far more than she should and her question and answer with Harper is so well constructed, as every time the grown up thinks they have come up with a convincing way of explaining strange events away, they are demolished by something even darker the youngster has seen. Why was Uncle hiding those people, why was he hitting them and why were they crying? The brutality of the near-future Britain is revealed through the forensic cross-examination of a child.

Aisling Loftus and Simon Manyonda (Photo Johan Persson)

In the next section an older Joan (Aisling Loftus) is just starting her career as a milliner, making a glorious green feathered hat alongside Todd (Simon Manyonda) a more experimental and experienced man who explains the uncomfortable truth about the place they work. Their conversation hints at routine issues with workplace communication and employee relations and, again, we only gradually find out what they are doing and why.

The stage keeps on darkening to delineate the passing of days and every time the hats get bigger and more elaborate a visual gag that is only setting us for the darkest and most spectacular reveal of the play.

From there it’s only the final act as Joan returns to her Aunt’s home with Todd and more of the future Britain’s realities are set out in sharp relief to that off-kilter humour.

IThankYouTheatre rating: *** Director Lyndsey Turner has created some startling moments and the staging makes the most of the Donmar’s intimacy but for me the intensity wavers in the final third.

Far Away plays at the Donmar until 28^th March – booking details on their website.