Glass. Kill. Bluebeard. Imp is a series of four new short plays by renowned playwright Caryl Churchill. Her work is known to challenge social injustices and feminist issues, and this quartet of plays is no exception.
In Kill, an ancient god sits suspended on a cloud and delivers a monologue which is occasionally interrupted by the yells of a child who sits on the floor. The God tells a story of Roman mythology - of sons marrying sisters, murders, empires, exiles, The Furies and more, weaving an intricate and incredibly complicated tale . The multiple characters in the story are never named and so it becomes increasingly hard to keep track of what is happening and to who - everything becomes seemingly senseless and confusing. The one thing that is easy to keep a track of, however, is the fact that there are multiple murders and sacrifices in the name of the gods, although the God makes sure to remind the audience that gods "don't exist".
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The monologue leads to an impassioned cry from the excellent Tom Mothersdale as the God, asking humans to stop killing each other in order to please the gods. This clever play is a clear reference to terrorism today without overtly mentioning modern times, drawing attention to the senseless nature of the murders that are committed with the excuse that they are following the commands of divine powers. By giving a voice to the gods (however real or made-up they may be) in whose name terrible acts of violence are enacted, Churchill provides an alternative point of view towards the stories that perpetuate modern news and really gets the audience thinking.
The second of the four plays (and my personal favourite) was Bluebeard. The fairytale of Bluebeard is one known by children and adults everywhere - a man who kills all of his wives until one day he is caught in the act by one of the wives' brothers. This play shows the friends of Bluebeard and how they come to terms with the fact that their great friend is in fact a serial killer. The play opens with one of the friends reading out a statement that he had written on a social platform (I assume Twitter). The play then cycles through the time of the friends processing the event - from saying that they always knew there was something wrong with Bluebeard to defending his character and remembering how nice he seemed to be. |
At one point, one of the friends is seen cutting up books by men that have harmed women, or books in which women are harmed and it is not condemned. In another scene, the same friend is seen designing a range of clothing that are the dresses of the murdered wives, arguing that dresses with fake blood stains on them would be more exciting but that clean dresses could be marketed as power dresses - "the victim reclaiming their power", thus commodifying the awful events. A play like this, based off a story written over 300 years ago, is totally relevant to today's world in the light of the Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein scandals. The play made me question the way that we deal with these situations in society today. Interestingly, Churchill has written the play so that no line is assigned to any particular character, allowing the director to choose how each character reacts. This meant that in this production each character went through all of the stages of processing - denial, acceptance, disgust at what has happened, anger, and even some sympathy for the perpetrator - showing that no-one really knows how to behave in such a situation, and we are not all as innocent and governed by morality as we would like to think. It was an excellently written and directed play that forced the audience to think without force-feeding any one message.
All four plays were interesting, brilliantly written and well crafted, but it was these two plays which left the most profound impact on me.
The design of the production was very simplistic, but it enhanced Churchill's text. There was no extravagant set design, but what there was (for example the blood-stained dresses that were the eerie backdrop of Bluebeard) brought even more attention to the text - helping the audience to see the intricate nature of Churchill's words. This was also true in terms of lighting, where it was often only bright white light, something that theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht used because of the fact that it "illuminates the truth". Much like Brecht, Churchill succeeded in distancing the audience from the emotional lives of the characters, with extracts of circus performance between the first three plays, and instead ensured that the audience was constantly thinking and observing the relationship between her stories and our modern day world. This play is definitely one that is worth a watch - arresting and thought-provoking.
The design of the production was very simplistic, but it enhanced Churchill's text. There was no extravagant set design, but what there was (for example the blood-stained dresses that were the eerie backdrop of Bluebeard) brought even more attention to the text - helping the audience to see the intricate nature of Churchill's words. This was also true in terms of lighting, where it was often only bright white light, something that theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht used because of the fact that it "illuminates the truth". Much like Brecht, Churchill succeeded in distancing the audience from the emotional lives of the characters, with extracts of circus performance between the first three plays, and instead ensured that the audience was constantly thinking and observing the relationship between her stories and our modern day world. This play is definitely one that is worth a watch - arresting and thought-provoking.