Escaped Alone and What If If Only - Royal Exchange Manchester Review

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Four ladies sit and gossip in a garden. It is summer and they seem to have nothing urgent to do and no particular place to go. They are probably in a residential home but this is never stated. It could be a prison - one of their number Vi (Annette Badland) murdered her husband ("the kitchen knife happened to be in my hand"). But then again, she refers to having completed her sentence. It may even be some sort of other-wordly realm - a leisurely form of limbo.



The fourth member of the circle - Mrs Jarrett (Maureen Beattie) is both of and separate to the other three. She could be a visitor from a different reality, someone from the future or the past. She frequently breaks off from the chatter to tell us the story of a biblical-scale environmental disaster of flood, famine, extreme weather and fire, with the survivors living underground or on roofs. She interweaves this with accounts of limited food resources being diverted to those on reality TV shows.



The abrupt, harsh changes in lighting were particularly effective and suitably disorientating. When Mrs Jarrett leaves, the play ends, with us having been fully engaged by the scenario and dialogue but none the wiser about what exactly it is we have witnessed and whether some or all of the characters were products of another’s imagination.

The dramatic tension comes from the sense that there may be something much stranger and darker going on which we are not explicitly told about. We are waiting for a revelation and resolution which never comes. At times this verges on making the drama too alienating to be absorbing. But overall, the lack of context and exposition makes it cryptic but acutely universal and compelling as a piece of theatre.

The second, shorter, one-act play of the evening, What If If Only starts after the interval and is equally multi-layered, enigmatic and poetic. This time we are not in a summer garden but in the messy flat of a young woman (Danielle Henry). All we know is that she has suffered a bereavement - she talks constantly to an empty chair ("if you wanted to talk to me, you could have stayed alive!"). Her grief-ridden craving to change the past starts to take dramatic shape, in the form of a caller (Annette Badland) who simply describes herself as ”the ghost of a dead future . . . . one that never happened.” She urges the young woman to ”make me happen”.



What does happen is that nine other characters form a circle, similar to a Greek Chorus (played by members of the Royal Exchange Elders) and take turns to speak of things that didn’t happen - an incantation of the trivial and the profound.

The structure of the play clearly owes something to A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. It is only 30 minutes long and verges on being a verse drama. As with Escaped Alone, there were moments when the enigmatic quality of the action threatened to make it uninvolving but there was just enough information to keep us absorbed. It is a rare gift to keep us focused on what is happening on stage when we are given minimal clues about the story we are watching unfold.

The cast took their bows before 9.30pm to cheers and applause. The fact that the Royal Exchange main stage was nearly full proves that audiences are willing to turn up for challenging drama, as much as high-quality light entertainment.

Throughout the plays, directed by Sarah Frankcom, I heard echoes of Alan Bennett, especially in the dialogue of Escaped Alone, (and especially if Alan Bennett had been talking to Albert Einstein). There were also shades of Harold Pinter’s genius for creating tension by withholding information. There were hints of J.B. Priestley in the theme of time travel. But all writers have influences and cross-overs with other writers and Caryl Churchill is a unique theatrical voice and talent and I hope many more venues take a chance on staging her beguiling work.

Walking away into the cold February night, I reflected on longer evenings at the theatre where much less was said and left unsaid,

Escaped Alone 55 mins

Interval: 20 mins

What If If Only 30 mins

Escaped Alone and What If If Only are at the Royal Exchange until 9 March 2025. Standard Tickets from £10. Age guidance: 14+ For more information click here .

The Theatre, Royal Exchange Theatre, St Ann's Square, Manchester M2 7DH
0161 833 9833

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