 THE QUESTORS ARCHIVE |
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| FAR AWAY It’s fashionable these days to talk about "post-9/11” drama, literature and music. Sometimes it seems that any writer whose theme has anything to do with war, terrorism, mass slaughter, political violence, governmental responsibility (or irresponsibility), inhumanity, the disintegration of society, or even the world we live in is presumed to have drawn their inspiration from the events of that day and their aftermath. But Far Away was written before then, and first staged in December 2000. To my mind, Caryl Churchill is more likely to have been thinking of events such as the Nazi holocaust, the slaughter of millions in Cambodia under Pol Pot, the disappearance of tens of thousands of political opponents of General Pinochet in Chile, the tribal massacres in Rwanda, ethnic cleansing in the republics that once made up Yugoslavia, political trials in the Soviet Union and Romania, and so on. When we remember that events such as these have occurred already in our real world, it is hard to claim that there is anything too far-fetched about Far Away. We may feel such things would never happen in England, but is that so impossible? If we can resign ourselves to their happening abroad, how long will it be before they become part of the fabric of home life? And then how will we live? What will happen to society? And to the world at large? As scene 1 of Far Away unfolds, we realise that it is terrifyingly close to home. Not only because of what is going on outside, but because of the astonishing ease with which a child is corrupted. Is scene 2 any less believable? There are many examples of individuals and whole societies that have become deeply complicit in evil while believing they are doing right and are making the world a better place. We can so easily turn our hearts and minds away from the truth of what is going on all around us, and accept it as an everyday occurrence. Do not forget that parades such as the one shown happened in England 300 years ago: they do not belong only in the future. And the issue of the moral responsibility of the artist is one we cannot ignore. While the final scene is undoubtedly surreal, it nevertheless feeds our imagination with so many images and ideas that it almost becomes believable. For, if there is no restraint on evil, who is to say that the whole world cannot fall into war, of the utterly all-enveloping kind portrayed here? If trust and humanity have gone, who or what might not be recruited to some side or another? And if darkness and silence join in, what greater power could there be? Surely, the world will end. Once critic, writing about the original production, stated that Caryl Churchill had written a play about hats. To be sure, the hats are to some extent a metaphor, as Todd and Joan explain to us, but I think this is a somewhat limited view of the true scope of this play, which packs so many themes, ideas and shocking juxtapositions into its short duration that one can almost emerge reeling. But I hope, as another critic put it, not too numb to think. David Emmet |
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| Return to Far Away (2006) | ||