ESCAPED ALONE and HERE WE GO by CARYL CHURCHILL at Frank Theatre

Churchill's sizzling work ESCAPED ALONE presents a 55-minute elliptical view of the apocalypse, fantasy intricately wired with politics. Four women in their 70s gather for tea in an English garden, combining small talk and the horrors of modern life. Their gossipy everyday conversations lay bare their psychological troubles from depression to fear of cats, from an accidentally dead husband to agoraphobia punctuated starkly with surreal apocalyptic monologues. Which world is real? How are they connected? The cast for ESCAPED ALONE features Cheryl Willis, Barbra Berlovitz, Maria Asp, and Janis Hardy!"It's worth noting that simply writing a play featuring four women in their seventies without making it about their age is a reasonably subversive political act." The AtlanticIn the second piece, Churchill peers into the void with HERE WE GO, a poetic triptych of mortality. In the first scene, a group has gathered at a party after a funeral, remembering the man who has passed. In the second scene, a man observes the afterlifeValhalla, Charon, and other mythical representations appear to him. But has he died? In the third wordless section, we see the intimate relationship between a frail man winding down his life with a caregiver. "What Churchill has written is a striking memento mori for an age without faith; and although her play is brief, that in itself evokes the idea that we are here for a short time and then are suddenly gone." The GuardianThe cast for HERE WE GO includes all of those in ESCAPED ALONE along with Patrick Bailey and Charla Marie Bailey.Caryl Churchill has written for the stage, television, and radio. A renowned and prolific playwright, her plays include Cloud Nine, Top Girls, Far Away, Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?, Bliss, Love and Information, Mad Forest, and A Number. In 2002, she received the Obie Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2010, she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.