Defying expectations
Fusion presents the funny and tragic ‘Escaped Alone’
Four women gather in the backyard on a sunny afternoon.
They finish each other’s sentences, riff and examine the ordinary labyrinth of middle class existence. They discuss the absurd, the sublime and the ridiculous.
But the cosiness is disarming. There’s something nasty churning within this fine English tea.
Fusion Theatre is staging Caryl Churchill’s “Escaped Alone” at the Cell Theatre beginning Thursday, Nov. 29.
“It’s like a luscious meal,” director Jacqueline Reid said. “It’s dense with shifting focus. It’s incredibly funny and incredibly tragic.”
The play stars Laurie Thomas, Elizabeth Huffman, Nancy Jeris and Dodie Montgomery as the grandmotherly Sally, Vi, Lena and Mrs. Jarrett.
Mrs. Jarrett peeks through a wooden wall like Alice spiraling down the rabbit hole. But her visions lurk well beyond Lewis Carroll’s fantasies.
In an elliptical view of apocalypse, she foresees that when we are poisoned by chemical leaks, private patients will be able to buy gas masks in assorted colors. A wind produced by property developers will turn heads inside out, with the army firing nets to catch flying cars. The obese will sell slices of themselves.
The women swap stories of grandchildren, hobbies, former jobs and their changing neighborhood. At one point, they burst into the 1963 Crystals hit “Da Doo Ron-Ron.”
“They are all at least 70,” Reid said. “These are people in marketing terms that are often marginalized.”
One of the women invites the adjective “feline” until she unleashes her secret self with a catalogue of reasons to fear cats. Another reveals her light dimming as she succumbs to depression. A third “accidentally” discovered a knife in her hand when her husband died.
Many critics regard Churchill as the most dazzlingly inventive living English dramatist. Her plays frequently address feminist issues, abuses of power and sexual politics.
“It becomes this dialogue of the macrocosm and the microcosm,” Reid said. “It’s ultimately hopeful.”