By Lucy Komisar
“Glass,” “Kill,” and “What If If Only” are smart Caryl Churchill plays, surreal metaphors of how people live as individuals and in societies. Of course, they are metaphors, and it takes Churchill’s inventiveness and director James MacDonald’s direct realistic portrayals to make them engage you. They were first presented in London at the Royal Court Theatre in 2019.
GLASS
“Glass” is a clever work about people’s feelings that imagines them as fantasy items on a mantlepiece, a girl (Ayana Workman), her brother (Sathya Sridharan), his friend (Japhet Balaban) and her mother (Adelind Horan.)
In the fantasy she is a glass figure and they become a clock, a plastic dog and a vase. The girl doesn’t want to be touched, afraid of being broken. The others can see into her. Mother puts bubble wrap on her when she goes out. Her friends tell her his father is keeping him a prisoner, wants to stop him from seeing her. He runs away but leaps under a train. Then she pushes herself out a window and shatters.
KILL
In “Kill,” the Gods (a terrific Deirdre O’Connell) is lounging on a cloud commenting on what goes on in her world and below. She says the Gods shut the furies in a box. “They say let us out and we’ll be kind.” We gods can do that. The people make us up. Again, this is fantasy about reality.
She tells the story of the killer earthlings through repetitions and mixing of the famous Greek myths. “They’re after the boy…He suffers and suffers because he kills his mother, which we’re against and so is everyone but he has his reason…and he kills her lover happy to kill him but taking out the knife he remembers loving his mother……though he still as the same hate in his heart coming home as when he’s little and runs away when she’s killing his father.”
And other stories like this one repeating and integrating them so we understand that these old stories are about the contradictions of people today who kill and regret and kill again. Violence is not just a myth. She addresses the audience, “We say nooo, don’t do that.” She screams,” We don’t like it. Stop!!”
It’s a play that shows Chuchill’s brilliance, and O’Connell is mesmerizing as her narrative gains speed.
WHAT IF IF ONLY
A young man (Sathya Sidharan) sits at a brown kitchen table set with a bottle, glass of red wine, a mug and a book.
He wonders about a man who spent years painting a realistic apple and wonders what he would do next. Do an unrealistic one? He’s really wondering about his own future on the death of his wife.
Suddenly a ghost (Anya Workman) appears. She tells him she is the ghost of a Dead Future that never happens. That of course depends on a past that didn’t happen: “If only you hadn’t driven…”
But then The Present (John Ellison Conlee) arrives. And later The Child Future (Cecilia Ann Popp alternating with Ruby Blaut), who says, “I’m going to happen.”
The play of course is a metaphor about grief, regret, acceptance and hope phrased in Churchill’s always unmatched twists of language. She wrote it after the death of her husband.
IMP
I was less enthralled with IMP, first presented at the Royal Court in 2021. which seems like a British TV sitcom. Jimmy (John Ellison Conlee) shares an unhappy life and apartment with Dot (Deirdre O’Connell). They are visited by a young woman Niamh (Adelind Horan) who appears to be a far relation from Ireland. And by a young man Rob (Japhet Balaban) who is split from the mother of his son and homeless, for some reason can’t keep a job. The young people find each other, then part, then get together again. Maybe this is a real life instead of surreal version of how people mess up their lives. It belongs on TV. (Not a compliment.)
“Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp.” Written by Caryl Churchill, directed by James MacDonald. The Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St, NYC. Runtime 2 hrs15 min. Opened April 16, 2025, closes May 11, 2025.