Caryl Churchill is the doyenne of theatrical experimentalism. Her plays shapeshift and surprise, dismantling artistic structures to prompt ideas about how we can construct new socio-political realities. Her post-apocalyptic play Escaped Alone, first staged to acclaim at the Royal Court a decade ago and now revived at the Coronet Theatre, is no different. The piece evolved out of the idiomatic expression ‘a storm in a teacup’, a trivial incident that provokes disproportionate rage. But, with a penchant for dark ironies, Churchill’s story playfully subverts the premise. In Escaped Alone, world-destroying atrocities occur and three septuagenarians pass the time impassively drinking tea.
With a running time of only an hour, it is a compact sugar cube of a play, yet Churchill successfully distils her cultural commentary through four sharply characterised mature women. It all begins with neighbourhood busybody Mrs Jarrett, who spies an open door in a fence and three friends having a garden tea party. Amongst them are Vi, a former hairdresser, domestic abuse victim, and one-time criminal; Sally, once employed in medicine, but now paralysed by a fear of felines; Lena, an ex-office worker suffering from agoraphobia (the idea of a trip to Tesco is terrifying). While the women spend most of their time nattering away about grandchildren, TV series spoilers, and how much everything has changed, their conversation, while jovial, is certainly not trivial. The group’s impaired psychological states are reflections of a dysfunctional society, yet they variously struggle to pinpoint the root of their disquietude.
Mrs Jarrett serves as a counterpoint to these women’s’ passivity and veneer of inner calm in the face of planetary extinction. She intersperses the group’s exchanges with feverish monologues of dystopian prose poetry. Like a biblical prophet—as hinted at in the play’s title, an allusion to the Book of Job (‘I only am escaped alone to tell thee’)—she delivers visions, albeit ones shot through with capitalist critique: ‘senior executives’ paid for ‘four hundred thousand tons of rock’ to destroy people’s homes and ‘chemicals leaked through cracks in the money’. Food shortages abound so starving ‘commuters watch breakfast on iPlayer’ and, in a prediction of the covid pandemic, an illness sweeps the world, necessitating civilians to shut their doors and ‘volunteers and conscripts over seven’ to nurse the sick and collect bodies. Churchill laces such hallucinogenic and disturbing images with light humour, as if to suggest it is one of the few coping mechanisms we have to make sense of such bewildering realities.
In this Italian language production, conceived by Piccolo Teatro and lacasadargilla, the play’s decidedly English sense of comedy is in no way impaired. In fact, the innovative blending of cultures expands the play’s attack on civilian complacency, excavating its borderless, universal resonance. Marco Rossi and Francesca Sgariboldi’s stage design visually reinforces this. What at first glance is a quaint suburban garden is no more than a synthetic parody of all that is green and pleasant. Hedges are fashioned out of recycled binbags, the lawn is singed, plastic Astro-turf, and a huge screen stands in for a real sunset. The overall impression is of a space that has been wasted by modernity. Set against such chaos, the women carry on with their social rituals because these occasions provide structure and a steadying sense of community in a world falling apart.
Even those that do rage against planetary destruction, like Mrs Jarrett, expend their fury, drink tea, and go home. For Churchill leaves the final resolution to her audience. Escaped Alone asks us to open our eyes to the atrocities unravelling everywhere, all the time. The play is a lyrical rallying call against inurement, placidity, and inaction in the face of catastrophe, reminding us of the responsibility each individual has to speak out against the irreparable ravaging of civilisation and planet earth.
By Caryl Churchill
Translated into Italian by: Monica Capuani
A project by: lacasadargilla
Director: Lisa Ferlazzo Natoli and Alessandro Ferroni
Cast includes: Caterina Carpio, Tania Garribba, Arianna Gaudio, Alice Palazzi
Until: 6th May to 9th May 2026
Running Time: 1 hour, with no interval
Review by Olivia Hurton
6th May 2026