When Herman Melville uses the quote, “And I only am escaped alone to tell thee,” at the end of Moby Dick, he attributes it to Job. But actually it is spoken by one of Job’s servants, of an attack that has nothing to do with a whale. When legendary UK playwright Caryl Churchill appropriates part of the quote for the title of her doomsday play, the question of escape seems to hang unresolved in the air. Whatever happens to us, she suggests, we won’t get out of it alone.
A writer who has always challenged form and function, who eschews linear plot and character development in favour of the development of ideas, Churchill’s later work represents a distillation and refinement of her craft. This double bill opens with a flat-out masterpiece that runs just under an hour, and if the following play, What If If Only, is the slighter work at only 25 minutes, it stands as a fascinating insight into the processes of one of the world’s most vital and provocative thinkers.
