Far Away, Young Vic, SE1
reviewed for The Times, 18 November 2014
Samantha Colley stars in Far Away
Caryl Churchill’s Far Away can be an opaque and difficult play. Over a short, sharp 40 minutes we’re treated to fragments of story from a world turned in upon itself, in which even the basic elements of nature have taken sides in a global war. The logic of this universe, only ever hinted at, can often be too obscure for the audience to piece together. But this is a showcase production for the winner of the prestigious JMK award for direction, and the director Kate Hewitt brings a clarity and a cracking narrative pace that demonstrate comprehensively that she’s a worthy winner of this accolade, one that previously helped to launch the careers of Thea Sharrock, Natalie Abrahami and Polly Findlay. In the mark of a great directorial talent, Hewitt will make even the doubters fall in love with Caryl Churchill all over again.
Hewitt coaxes haunting performances from each of her cast of four, including a performance of remarkable composure and intelligence from Sasha Willoughby, a nine-year-old actress. Willoughby (alternating with Emilia Jones) opens the play as Joan, an innocent but shrewd observer just beginning to notice that adults cannot be trusted. Over the course of her life we meet her next as she starts to take her place in a corrupt civilian system, and then again as a hardened fighter, weeping with frustration and military exhaustion.
Samantha Colley, building on the cold passion of her recent role as Abigail in the Old Vic’s Crucible, brings a chilling realism to the adult Joan’s climactic elegy for her collapsed world. Churchill’s work bears obvious comparisons to Sarah Kane and Samuel Beckett — scorched earth, absurdist humour — but Colley’s interpretation is rich with older resonances. As thunder and lightening are warped by human discord — “who will mobilise darkness and silence?” — there are shades of Titania’s forgeries of jealousy and of Greek myth at its fiercest.
Hewitt’s bold, simple staging leaves plenty of room for surprises. But it also reduces the number of auditorium seats available. So book fast.
