Caryl Churchill’s plays are unique. At least, if there are any others writing like her, I don’t know about them. She deals almost exclusively with enigmas, with conundrums. She presents situations from a deliberately skewed angle, off-kilter as all get out. She’s often been categorized—if she can be categorized—as “modernist.” And you can say that again!
The interpretation challenge that Churchill’s works present can be fun as well as rewarding. That’s if viewers are able to make them out. That’s if they can take away something viable, though possibly not exactly what other viewers are intuiting. Indeed, perhaps not what Churchill herself had in mind when composing the jaunty exercises as if enjoying a game of cat’s cradle.
Keeping those varying possibilities in mind is a good way to approach the four one-acts here under the title Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp. They’re Churchill’s most recent plays—Glass, Kill, Imp from 2019, What If If Only from 2021.
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★★★☆ review here.]
In Glass several actors—Ayana Workman, Sathya Sridharan, Japhet Balaban, and Adelind Horan—portray objects on a mantelpiece interacting with each other. Workman is the title figure, a transparent glass girl. In the course of sad events, she doesn’t remain intact. Among the others witnessing her plight is a clock and a vase.
What’s Churchill up to with the brief one-act? Your guess is as good as mine. My guess is that Churchill is contemplating sensitivity. She’s observing that as our clocks tick by, recognizing the sensitivity of fellow women and men is tantamount. My response to the playlet is that getting her point across—if that is her point—Churchill becomes unnecessarily twee.
In Kill Deidre O’Connell is a lone woman representing the Olympus gods. As all the gods, her one distinctive purpose is keeping the argumentative furies locked in a box. She does so in a gorgeous white gown that costumer Enver Chakartash designed with a flowing skirt that gives O’Connell the appearance of oh-so-upbeat Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days.
For five minutes or so, she speaks rapidly about killing, more specifically about the seemingly never-ending homicides that spill endless blood in Greek myths. References to Oedipus, Jocasta, Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, Orestes, Medea, Jason, you name the murderous mythical figure and he or she is undoubtedly included here.
The league-a-minute outburst is fascinating, made more so by O’Connell, who in the past has already proved her monolog prowess. She’s worth the listen. Churchill’s intent is less obvious. It may be that through the killing rundown, she’s obliquely stating that we all exist in a violent world. One thing for sure: spectators unfamiliar with Greek myths, with the house of Atreus et all may have no inkling what’s going on.
Then comes What If If Only, wherein Sridharan is a character named Someone on Their Own (incorrect syntax, but never mind). After musing about painting apples either to look exactly like apples or not like apples at all, he’s interrupted by a few people (John Ellison Conlee, Cecilia Ann Popp at the performance I saw) and one or two others who claim to be embodiments of the future. As Churchill plots it, they may or may not be what-if futures that may never have eventuated. They’re followed by one promising she’s the real thing.
Got it so far? Neither did I, convincingly. What I extracted is that Churchill is trying to suggest that dwelling on the future is futile. Makes sense to me, although the manner in which Churchill’s lays it out takes the kind of time that people don’t want to waste.
Churchill’s final insert is the maraschino cherry on top of this in-and-out dessert. Throughout Imp, Jimmy (Conlee) and Dot (O’Connell) entertain Rob (Balaban) and Niamh (Horan); the latter two sometime separately, sometime together, partly because the well-meaning former two would like to get the latter two together.
What largely sets Imp apart from what precedes it on the bill is that it’s not abstruse. It’s straightforward gritty comedy in which apparently North England Jimmy and Dot establish they’re cousins—adamantly not kissing cousins—who live together and like it, despite acknowledged differences.
Okay, granted, Imp is a mite abstruse. Just a few minutes before it finishes and patrons have taken a strong liking to all four participants, garrulous Dot, remaining in her chair throughout, brings up an imp (!) whom she insists is causing trouble in the house after being let out of its bottle.
Is Churchill slipping back into the surreal here? Doesn’t matter. If any imp has been released from any bottle, it’s Imp itself from the magic bottle that’s Churchill’s miraculous mind. It’s also the imp of the ensemble’s good performances and the always-creative James MacDonald’s trampoline direction.
Very notably, Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp. is mounted as a vaudeville evening with velvet curtain and vaudeville lights circling the proscenium. Set designer Miriam Buether’s sumptuous curtain and Isabella Bryd’s flashy lights are augmented between the first and second one-acts by Junru Wang, who pulls off an impressive balancing act; and later by Maddox Morfit-Tighe, an ultimately five-pins juggler. Highly adept at what they do, they’re also obviously employed to imply how the production is to be regarded. This is only vaudeville. Got it?
So what if the production isn’t start-to-finish thoroughly effective? Like a vaudeville bill, there’s still enough to muse on satisfactorily.
Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp. opened April 16, 2025, at the Public Theater and runs through May 11. Tickets and information: publictheater.org
