Churchill: Shorts (NHB Modern Plays)

By Caryl Churchill

Ten short plays for stage, radio and TV, selected by Caryl Churchill, opening up a little-known aspect of her writing, and demonstrating her considerable versatility and breadth of concern. Includes an introduction by the author.
Abortive (Radio 3, 1971)
The After-Dinner Joke (BBC TV, 1978)
The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution
Hot Fudge (Royal Court Theatre, 1989)
The Judge's Wife (BBC TV, 1972)
Lovesick (Radio 3, 1967)
Not Not Not Not Not Enough Oxygen (Radio 3, 1971)
Schreber's Nervous Illness (Radio 3, 1972)
Seagulls
Three More Sleepless Nights (Soho Poly Theatre, 1980)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: Dec 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781780016221

Caryl Churchill

Caryl Churchill is a leading playwright who has written widely for the stage, television and radio. Her stage plays include: Owners (Royal Court Theatre, London, 1972); Objections to Sex and Violence (Royal Court, 1975); Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (Joint Stock, 1976); Vinegar Tom (Monstrous Regiment, 1976); Traps (Royal Court, 1977); Cloud Nine (Joint Stock, 1979); Three More Sleepless Nights (Soho Poly and Royal Court, 1980); Top Girls (Royal Court, 1982); Fen (Joint Stock, 1983); Softcops (RSC, 1984); A Mouthful of Birds with David Lan (Joint Stock, 1986); Serious Money (Royal Court and Wyndham's, London, then Public Theater, New York, 1987); Icecream (Royal Court, 1989); Mad Forest (Central School of Speech and Drama, then Royal Court, 1990); Lives of the Great Poisoners with Orlando Gough and Ian Spink (Second Stride, 1991); The Skriker (Royal National Theatre, 1994); Thyestes translated from Seneca (Royal Court, 1994); Hotel with Orlando Gough and Ian Spink (Second Stride, 1997); This is a Chair (Royal Court, 1997); Blue Heart (Joint Stock, 1997); Far Away (Royal Court, 2000, and Albery, London, 2001, then New York Theatre Workshop, 2002); A Number (Royal Court, 2002, then New York Theatre Workshop, 2004); A Dream Play after Strindberg (Royal National Theatre, 2005); Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? (Royal Court, 2006, then Public Theater, New York, 2008); Bliss, translated from Olivier Choinière (Royal Court, 2008); Seven Jewish Children – a play for Gaza (Royal Court, 2009); Love and Information (Royal Court, 2012); Ding Dong the Wicked (Royal Court, 2012); Here We Go (National Theatre, 2015); Escaped Alone (Royal Court, 2016), Pigs and Dogs (Royal Court, 2016), Glass. Kill. Bluebeard. Imp. (Royal Court, 2019) and What If If Only (Royal Court, 2021).

Book preview

Introduction

The first of these plays was written in 1965, the last in 1989. The first four are radio plays that could possibly be done in the theatre. Lovesick and Schreber have that movement between being inside someone’s head and out among extraordinary events that works particularly well on radio, though Schreber was also done as a one-man show by Kenneth Haigh at the Soho Poly. Abortive and Not … Enough Oxygen, both with one set and few characters, could easily be staged. It’s slightly unnerving to read Not … Oxygen twenty years later. It’s more obviously relevant now than it was then.

Hospital and Seagulls are two stage plays that were never done. Hospital was written around the same time as Schreber, and combined my interest in Fanon and in Laing; Algeria had interested me since the fifties. Fanon’s Black Faces, White Masks was one of the things (along with Genet) that led to Joshua, the black servant, being played by a white in Cloud Nine. Seagulls was written in 1978 and felt too much as if it was about not being able to write for me to want it done at the time. I promptly wrote Softcops and Cloud Nine and forgot about it.

The Judge’s Wife was written for TV in the early seventies and feels to me like a TV play, depending very much for its effect on the filmed flashbacks. It was a play I wrote first and looked for a slot for afterwards, whereas The After-Dinner Joke (1977) was written because Margaret Matheson wanted to produce a series of Plays for Today for the BBC on public issues and suggested I look at charities. I admired two extremes on TV, extreme naturalism and extreme non-naturalism – (Loach, Joffe; Monty Python). I went for the second – no of course it’s not as funny as Monty Python. It’s stageable I think if anyone would enjoy trying with a small group doubling and quintupling. Some references would need updating but the basic issue seems to be the same now.

When I wrote Sleepless Nights (1979) for Les Waters, who directed it at the Soho Poly, I wanted two kinds of quarrel – the one where you can’t speak and the one where you both talk at once. When I was writing Top Girls I first wrote a draft of the dinner scene with one speech after another and then realised it would be better if the talk overlapped in a similar way. Having got a taste for it I’ve gone on overlapping in most things I’ve written since.

I wrote Hot Fudge ten years later. Max Stafford-Clark, who was about to direct Icecream was concerned at it being so short, and suggested I write something to go with it. I made it so the two actors who doubled in Icecream could play the main parts in Hot Fudge and the other four double as their friends. In the end I wasn’t sure it did go well with Icecream and was afraid it would somehow spoil it. But when we did Hot Fudge as a reading anyway we found we liked it. So now I feel the two plays can be done either together or separately.

Caryl Churchill, 1989

LOVESICK

Characters

HODGE

MAX

ELLEN

ROBERT

KEVIN

JESSICA

Lovesick was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 8 April 1967. The cast was as follows:

Produced by John Tydeman

Reviews for Churchill

[devil_llama · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

As with many anthologies, a bit of a mixed bag. The works here don't have a common theme, other than perhaps the rejection of standard linear story-telling and the Aristotelian three-part structure. The women are strong, but the author does have an unfortunate tendency to resort to the stereotypical strong, bitchy woman that mows others over in her path. There is definitely a streak of feminism, but at times a sense that the author is lashing out against feminism in favor of a version of femininity. Still, the plays are interesting and quirky, and definitely well worth a look.