Far Away (NHB Modern Plays)

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This last image reveals Churchill's preoccupation with Foucault's concept of "docile bodies", bodies disciplined by institutions such as the family or factory into becoming obedient wives/workers, one such being Val, an oppressed rural worker. Val's sudden reappearance is a theatrical coup that left theatre-goers gasping. But she is also pointing to the possibilities of opening up a new "unreal" theatrical space that might encompass a woman's desire not controlled by the male gaze, patriarchy or capitalism. Saville, Alice (29 February 2020). "The costly stage magic of Caryl Churchill". Exeunt Magazine . Retrieved 18 May 2020.From her early historical, epic Brechtian plays to the more surreal later plays, Churchill has lit a blazing trail. Her career is unmatched in contemporary theatre and she stands with the greats in insisting, with brilliance, on her vision. Teleplays: The Judge’s Wife, 1972; Turkish Delight, 1974; The After-Dinner Joke, 1978; The Legion Hall Bombing, 1978; Crimes, 1981.

Phillips, Michael (19 February 2004). " 'Far Away's' 3 acts nearly a masterpiece". Chicago Tribune . Retrieved 9 June 2020. Simon Stephens described the play in 2004 as being ahead of its time, remarking that "for me the strongest theatrical response to 9/11 was prescient and came before it, which was Caryl Churchill’s Far Away. I remember reading [the play] in April 2000 and loving it but feeling it had […] the kind of timbre of absurdism about it, and you read it now and it feels like social realism." [21] In 2014 Stephens stated that the play "I think remains the most significant play of this millennium. I think it was astonishingly prescient in its depiction of a culture on the cusp of apocalypse. And linguistically so granite-tight and the images so beautiful." [22] Provocative and disturbing, “Far Away” offers an incisive exploration of fear and tyranny in a dystopian — but uncomfortably familiar — world at war.The play opens with a young girl, Joan (Sophia Ally), who, after being sent by her city-dwelling parents to live with her aunt Harper (Jessica Hynes) and uncle in the countryside, discovers a dark secret in the middle of the night.