Caryl
Churchill, “Far Away”, a play in three acts,
Nick Hern Book, 2000, London.
“Far
Away” is a play where only three characters appear:
-Joan, a young girl at
first of the play and older later.
-Harper:
Joan’s aunt.
-Todd: a young man
with who Joan works when she is older.
The
play doesn’t show how the characters are. They show us, through their
conversations, different themes.
The
play is constructed in three brief acts which seem not having connection
between them. They happen in three different times:
-The first scene sets in Harper’s house, at night.
-The second act happens “several years later”
-and the third act happens “several years later”.
Joan is the character who connects the other two characters. First as a
child and later as a young woman.
In
the first act, Joan is a visitor in Harper’s house (pag.9: Harper: “There might be things that are not your business when you’re a visitor
in someone else’s house”). It’s at night and she can’t sleep. Then she
starts to ask questions to her aunt about what she has seen. Her uncle “bundling someone into a shed” (pag.8), “there was a lorry” (pag.8), “I heard crying inside” (pag.9), “Why where the children in the shed?”
(pag.11), “I could see the faces and
which ones had blood on” (pag.11).
Her
aunt lies her to cover what her uncle is doing, but the secret is found out
(pag.11: Harper: “You’ve found out
something secret”). Harper explains to Joan that her uncle is “helping these people. He’s helping them
escape. He’s giving them shelter” (pag.12: Harper), however, “He was hitting a man with a stick.”
(pag.13: Joan).
The
author shows us a controversial point of view: Is Joan’s uncle really giving
shelter or is he participating of genocide?.
The second
act has six scenes. Each one is in a different time (pag.16:1: “making a hat”; pag.18: 2: “Next day”; pag.20: 3: “Next day”; pag.22: 4: “Next day”; pag.24: 5: “Next day”; pag.24: 6: “A next week”), but all six scenes are
in the same place where Joan,
now grown up, and Todd work
making hats.
The
difference between the scenes is what the hats are like (“more brightly
decorated”, “big and extravagant”, “enormous and preposterous”, “new hats”).
Joan and Todd talk about their work, the contracts (pag.19: Todd: “There something wrong with how we get the
contracts”), the “management’s
corrupt” (pag.21: Joan) and “what to
do” (pag.21: Todd). Front this Joan
thinks that if Todd came up
with something (pag.21), he might lose his job (pag.23). Here, the author shows
us the exploitation of the working
people.
In
the scene five, the hats “more enormous and preposterous ”are wearing by a “procession of….chained
prisoners….on their way to execution”( pag.24). As Todd says: “the hats
are ephemeral. It’s like a metaphor for something or other” (pag.25).
Another time, the author shows us the genocide.
In
the third act Todd
and Harper are in Harper’s
house talking about a war which has encompassed the animals ( butterflies,
wasps, “there were horses standing under the trees, and suddenly wasps attacked
them out of the plums” (pag29: Todd), cats,…) as well the nations of the world.
Through the metaphors, the horrors
of the world are showed:
-pag.30: Harper: “cats….Did you know they’ve
been killing babies?”, “In China.They jump in the cots when
nobody’s looking”.
-pag.31:
Harper: “massacre in Dar-es-Salaam”.
-pag.33: Harper: “waterbirds…always that
terrible danger of being eaten” (by cocodriles).
-pag.33: Harper: “Mallards are not a good
waterbird. They commit rape…”.
-pags.33-34: Todd and Harper: “You mean sweet
little bambis?; You mean that ironically?; I mean it sarcastically.”
-pags.34-35: Todd: “I’ve shot cattle and
children in Ethiopia. I’ve gassed mixed troops of Spanish, computer
programmers…when my hands were full of blood….it was better than sex.”
-pag.35: Todd: “people hanging upside down
by their feet”.
Opinion
I
think that the author has wanted that the reader or the spectator saw the horrors of the humanity: genocide,
corruption, exploitation at work, violence, tortures, etc, through three
different conversations and three different times, but joined between
themselves through the same characters.
In my opinion this play is very difficult to understand not only by
these different situations but also by the strange metaphors introduced. It
remember me “The animal Farm” by George Orwell where through the animals the
author shows us the barbarises done by the humanity and “Ashes to Ashes” by
Harold Pinter where it is showed too.