Escaped Alone (NHB Modern Plays)

Caryl Churchill

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781780017136
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

"I'm walking down the street and there's a door in the fence open and inside there are three women I've seen before."

Three old friends and a neighbour. A summer of afternoons in the back yard. Tea and catastrophe.

Caryl Churchill's Escaped Alone premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in January 2016.

1.

MRS J I’m walking down the street and there’s a door in the fence open and inside are three women I’ve seen before.

VI Don’t look now but there’s someone watching us.

LENA Is it that woman?

SALLY Is that you, Mrs Jarrett?

MRS J So I go in.

SALLY Rosie locked out in the rain

VI forgot her key

SALLY climbed over

LENA lucky to have neighbours who

SALLY such a high wall

VI this is Rosie her granddaughter

MRS J I’ve a son, Frank

VI I’ve a son

MRS J suffers from insomnia

VI doesn’t come very often. But Thomas

LENA that’s her nephew

SALLY he’d knock up the shelves in no time

VI a big table

SALLY grain of the wood

VI a table like that would last a lifetime

SALLY an heirloom

LENA except we all eat off our laps

MRS J nothing like a table

LENA I like a table

VI all have each other’s keys because there’s no way round and anyway I couldn’t climb

MRS J unless you lose them

VI no I hang them all on a nail

SALLY in a teapot

VI teapot?

SALLY Elsie puts them in and takes them out

LENA down the floorboards

VI only use bags in mugs

SALLY holds your finger and then takes one step and down she goes.

LENA Barney never out of his phone

VI I’d have been the same

LENA looking pale

VI whole worlds in your pocket

LENA little bit worried about Kevin and Mary, never hear an endearment

SALLY but nobody ever knows

MRS J you’d be surprised what goes on

LENA twenty years in June

VI we had to wear hats

SALLY a pink one and I didn’t

VI so you gave it to Angela

SALLY I’d forgotten Angela

LENA shadows under her eyes

VI ended up with a green one and it didn’t suit you

LENA I could never say a word of course.

VI And Maisie, never so happy

LENA that’s her niece

SALLY quantum

VI I can’t really follow

SALLY I can’t even add up

LENA they don’t add up any more

VI particles and waves I can manage but after that

SALLY always good at sums as a child, she’d say two big numbers

VI and while we were carrying things in our head

LENA I needed a pencil

SALLY she’d say the answer and it was always right

MRS J I could always make change quick with the shillings and pence

VI we’d be the ones got it wrong

LENA easier now it’s decimal

SALLY always right.

LENA And Vera

MRS J Four hundred thousand tons of rock paid for by senior executives split off the hillside to smash through the roofs, each fragment onto the designated child’s head. Villages were buried and new communities of survivors underground developed skills of feeding off the dead where possible and communicating with taps and groans. Instant celebrities rose on ropes to the light of flashes. Time passed. Rats were eaten by those who still had digestive systems, and mushrooms were traded for urine. Babies were born and quickly became blind. Some groups lost their sexuality while others developed a new morality of constant fucking with any proximate body. A young woman crawling from one society to the other became wedged, only her head reaching her new companions. Stories of those above ground were told and retold till there were myths of the husband who cooked feasts, the wife who swam the ocean, the gay lover who could fly, the child who read minds, the talking dog. Prayers were said to them and various sects developed with tolerance and bitter hatred. Songs were sung until dry throats caused the end of speech. Torrential rain leaked through cracks and flooded the tunnels enabling screams at last before drownings. Survivors were now solitary and went insane at different rates.

2.

SALLY corner shop

LENA don’t like the

VI mini Tesco

LENA bit far

MRS J used to be the fish and chip shop

VI that other one’s gone

SALLY the...