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Escaped Alone

Tron Theatre, Glasgow

Five stars

Home and garden are sanctuary and safe house for the four women of certain ages who line up in Caryl Churchill’s quietly devastating play. As it digs deep into what lies beneath the small talk and shared experiences of friends on a sunny afternoon, a series of everyday revelations give way to something more globally seismic.

It begins with Blythe Duff’s Mrs Jarrett stumbling on Lena, Vi and Sally catching some rays as they indulge in chit chat, gossip and tittle tattle as any group of long standing friends and neighbours might do. As everyday mundanities hint at more complex lives, each scene is punctuated with a monologue that reveal worlds of personal and global devastation.

Churchill’s play may date from 2016, but Joanna Bowman’s post Covid pandemic revival now looks in part a prophecy of things to come. Ushered in by sound designer Susan Bear’s foreboding drones, Anne Kidd as Lena, Joanna Tope as Sally, Irene Macdougall as Vi and Duff as cuckoo in the nest Mrs Jarrett line up on Anna Orton’s grass strip set like golden girls having a holiday in the sun. The significance of the Blakeian skies and barren landscapes beaming from Lewis den Hertog’s slow burning video backdrop is brought home in tandem with Bear’s crashing soundscape. 

Apart from anything else going on here, this is a magnificent showcase for four brilliant actresses, with Duff, Kidd, Macdougall and Tope bringing all their wisdom and experience to bear in a play of hidden depths that pulse its fifty or so minute running time with the brevity, discipline and resistance to spelling everything out of an old school TV play. At its core is a troublingly current snapshot of a suburban Eden which acts as a haven for survivors of all kinds of catastrophes in a hauntingly realised production.


The Herald, February 26th 2024

Ends 

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