CARYL CHURCHILL
FAR AWAY
Far Away was originally seen at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in November 2000.
The characters are:
Joan, first a young girl, after, she is older, and she is interpreted by another woman.
Harper, Joan’s aunt.
Todd, a young man.
About the space, reading the play is difficult to know how is it, but at first they are on a sitting-room, in a house, then they are on a workbench and after on the house again.
The time could be, at first, anytime, after several years later, then a complete week and the several years later. There are some time jumps during the play
This play has been so difficult to understand to me.
The world where they live is a fantastic place(maybe that is the reason to the title, far away, like a fairy tale with fantastic characters(Far far away)), when she is young she sees his uncle beating people on a van, and she suspects something. Her aunt tries to lie her, and she is a young girl so she believes her aunt.
When she has grown up, she works with Todd making beautiful hats, which will be shown and after they will be destroyed. I don’t understand the sense it has.
Several years later we will see that the world is a crazy place where all, nations, people, animals, objects, etc…., are in war between them, each one of the species is on alliance
with other, and if you are in an opposed faction, you will have to be aware if you don’t want to die. You can be attacked by the ants or the Japanese.
The real world references in this play may be, I think, the crazy world where we live, with wars, people killing each other, thefts, drogues, animal extinctions, abuses, exploitation of people and resources, contamination….. and the ignorance of the majority of people about this problems.
I don’t know, but, maybe one day all this destroyer system where we live will explode in a enormous world war, where people will get crazy like in the play, and which will extinct the live in this world.