Far Away

Synopsis

With a new government imminent and a world divided about healing the planet, Far Away tells the story of a love affair played out against the odds. A young girl is far from home. It's late and she can't sleep. She opens her bedroom window and, in the darkness, discovers a secret which will change her life forever. So begins a journey into the heart of our collective hopes, hidden fears and most urgent questions.

Our Review:

25 January 2001

Caryl Churchill's cryptic, elliptical new play Far Away was originally presented in the close-up setting of the Royal Court's Theatre Upstairs, where its oppressive story of a world from which all certainties had been removed was both dense and overpowering.

This vision of humanity - not to mention the collusion of other species - hurtling towards oblivion was nightmarish and chilling. It was given a fantastically bold production by Stephen Daldry (the Royal Court's former artistic director, in his first return to the theatre since directing the screen hit Billy Elliot). For the climactic middle scene culminating in a fashion parade of bizarre hats by manacled prisoners en route to their deaths, the stage was filled with almost as many performers as there were people in the audience.

As that scene (out of three in total during the 50 minutes that the play runs) suggests, there’s nothing easy or obvious about this experience - not least, ev...

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com - 25 February 2001:

Caryl Churchill's work of genius is stunning. It shows us a world that is, at first, scarily close to our own. In the larger, dare I say, more commercially driven, Albery, some of the plays passion, and subtlety,is lost to an audience searching to clasify the play to a genre - laughter was heard when the world is at total conflict. This experience is more fulfilling than any other play presently in London that I have seen. It will be a play, such as Gielguid and Olivier's Romeo and Juliet, that will become an important part of theatre in the twentieth century. ...

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