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Far Away (Donmar Warehouse)

Verdict: Caryl Churchill loses the plot

THERE are times when you ask yourself: am I mad, or is everyone else? When I found that there were critics who admired and even enjoyed this production of Caryl Churchill’s play, I put to myself that question. And the answer, dear reader, is that it’s the (other) critics who are nuts. Plus, clearly, the playwright.

What is the play about, then? I wish I could tell you. But I honestly don’t know. The first of three interconnected scenes involves a little girl, Joan — an excellent Sophia Ally (below) — observing that her uncle is up to no good in the backyard. He’s making people scream in a lorry, and beating others in a shed.

Her aunt Harper — Jessica Hynes in terrific motherly mode — reassures her all’s well. Is he a people trafficker, a genocidal butcher — the play dates from 2000 — or a psychopath who preys on refugees? We await the big reveal, or at least some clue about where this is going. But we don’t get it.

Next we see Joan, now grown up and played by Aisling Loftus, making the kind of absurdist hats you get at Ascot’s Ladies Day. Except, disturbingly, that they’re made for prisoners to wear at a grim parody of an Easter Bonnet parade.

Plainly, this is a metaphor. But of what? Industrialisation? Concentration camps? Millinery in the service of the overlords?

There is no discernible link, other than the characters, between this and the final scene, where everyone has finally lost it. Harper is saying phrases like: ‘Mallards are not a good waterbird. They commit rape, and they’re on the side of the elephants and the Koreans.’

This is an author who has lost the plot in both senses. And still the critics say she’s wonderful. The only thing this play has going for it is that it lasts for 45 minutes.