Caryl Churchill

Far Away

First published in 2000 as a paperback original by Nick Hern Books: London.

Characters

There are three talking characters represented; Joan (as a girl and as an adult), her aunt Harper and Joan’s husband Todd. Joan is the protagonist. In the first act she is a girl with an unknown age. In the second act she is ‘several years’ older and the last act also takes place several years later. She can be described in the first act as curious in the second as creative and in the third as violent. The other characters are more difficult to describe, we get little to know about their characters. Their view on the world and the world self contain different values and truths.

Resume

Act 1 Joan is sleeping at her aunt Harper’s house. At 2 in the morning she talks to her aunt that she went out. She climbed out of her window because she heard a person scream. and went into the garden were she saw her uncle. Harper get’s nervous and serves up some answers. Joan starts talking. She saw her uncle push a young man or woman in a shred and heard crying out of a lorry. There was blood on the floor and there were children in the shred. All the people had blood on their faces. All the time Harper is making up excuses why the people were there. At last Joan tells that she saw her uncle hitting a man and a child. When Harper says that the people are refugees and that man was a traitor Joan is satisfied with the answer. She goes back to bed again.

Act 2 The second act takes place several years later. Joan works in a hat factory with Todd. They make extravagant enormous hats. Joan is new and Todd tells her what is wrong with the place, with the management. This goes on a few days. They talk about work and one time the mention the ‘trials’ they see in the evening. (p.20) On the fifth day we see ‘A procession of ragged, beaten, chained prisoners, each wearing a hat, on their way to execution.’ (p.24) In the next workweek Todd and Joan are working again. They talk about that it is a pity they burn the hats with the bodies and that Joan had won a price for her hat.

Act 3 This act also takes place several years later. There is a war. Harper and Todd talk about who are to trust or are to kill. The whole world is in war. ‘TODD: But we’re not exactly on the other side from the French. It’s not as if they’re the Moroccans and the ants. HARPER: It’s not as if they’re the Canadians, the Venezuelans and the mosquitoes. TODD: It’s not as if they’re the engineers, the chefs, the children under five, the musicians.’ (p.30) Joan is sleeping. She comes outside and it becomes clear that she came to aunt Harper’s house to see her husband Todd. She starts to tell about her journey and thereby describes how the world looks.

Space

Interesting in this play is the world. In the first act we can place ourselves in this world. We can identify ourselves with Joan who is shocked and surprised by the cruelty she observes in the garden. We alienate ourselves more and more during the second and especially the third act from this world. The world is getting further and further away from how we know it. It is like a world ‘far away’ in a cruel fairytale.

Time

There is no specific time indications. We neither get to know the ages of the characters. We do get to know that in the first act Joan is a girl. The second act is several years later and Joan just finished her education as a hat-maker. In this act are six scenes. This seem to be the five days of a workweek and than the last scene three days later, after the weekend. The last scene is also several years later, though the world described looks more like a world far away in the future.

Language/style

The whole play is written in a surreal way. The last scene can be seen as some kind of language-game. When they are describing the ‘enemies’ they are describing more and more weird enemies. ‘HARPER: The car salesmen. TODD: Portuguese car salesmen. HARPER: Russian Swimmers. TODD: Thai Butchers. HARPER Latvian dentists.’ (p.30-31) Though the whole play and especially the last act is filled with a tension that eliminates ‘funny game’-effect.