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Plays 3: Icecream / Mad Forest / Thyestes / The Skriker / Lives of the Great Poisoners / A Mouthful of Birds
Ice Cream, Mad Forest, The Shriker, Lives of the Great Poisoners and A Mouthful of Birds, as well as an introduction by the author.
352 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2001
3 people are currently reading
70 people want to read
About the author
Caryl Churchill
94 books227 followersCaryl Churchill (born 3 September 1938) is an English dramatist known for her use of non-naturalistic techniques and feminist themes, dramatisation of the abuses of power, and exploration of sexual politics.[1] She is acknowledged as a major playwright in the English language and one of world theatre's most influential writers.
Her early work developed Bertolt Brecht's modernist dramatic and theatrical techniques of 'Epic theatre' to explore issues of gender and sexuality. From A Mouthful of Birds (1986) onwards, she began to experiment with forms of dance-theatre, incorporating techniques developed from the performance tradition initiated by Antonin Artaud with his 'Theatre of Cruelty'. This move away from a clear Fabel dramaturgy towards increasingly fragmented and surrealistic narratives characterises her work as postmodernist.
Prizes and awards
Churchill has received much recognition, including the following awards:
1958 Sunday Times/National Union of Students Drama Festival Award Downstairs
1961 Richard Hillary Memorial Prize
1981 Obie Award for Playwriting, Cloud Nine
1982 Obie Award for Playwriting, Top Girls
1983 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (runner-up), Top Girls
1984 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Fen
1987 Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy of the Year, Serious Money
1987 Obie Award for Best New Play, Serious Money
1987 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Serious Money
1988 Laurence Olivier/BBC Award for Best New Play, Serious Money
2001 Obie Sustained Achievement Award
2010 Inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
Plays
Downstairs (1958)
You've No Need to be Frightened (1959?)
Having a Wonderful Time (1960)
Easy Death (1960)
The Ants, radio drama (1962)
Lovesick, radio drama (1969)
Identical Twins (1960)
Abortive, radio drama (1971)
Not Not Not Not Not Enough Oxygen, radio drama (1971)
Owners (1972)
Schreber's Nervous Illness, radio drama (1972) – based on Memoirs of My Nervous Illness
The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution (written 1972)
The Judge's Wife, radio drama (1972)
Moving Clocks Go Slow, (1973)
Turkish Delight, television drama (1973)
Objections to Sex and Violence (1975)
Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1976) [7]
Vinegar Tom (1976)
Traps (1976)
The After-Dinner Joke, television drama (1978)
Seagulls (written 1978)
Cloud Nine (1979)
Three More Sleepless Nights (1980)
Top Girls (1982)
Crimes, television drama (1982)
Fen (1983)
Softcops (1984)
A Mouthful of Birds (1986)
A Heart's Desire (1987)[18]
Serious Money (1987)
Ice Cream (1989)
Hot Fudge (1989)
Mad Forest (1990)
Lives of the Great Poisoners (1991)
The Skriker (1994)
Blue Heart (1997)
Hotel (1997)
This is a Chair (1999)
Far Away (2000)
Thyestes (2001) – translation of Seneca's tragedy
A Number (2002)
A Dream Play (2005) – translation of August Strindberg's play
Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? (2006)
Seven Jewish Children – a play for Gaza (2009)
Love and Information (2012)
Ding Dong the Wicked (2013)
Here We Go (play) (2015)
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caryl_Ch...
Her early work developed Bertolt Brecht's modernist dramatic and theatrical techniques of 'Epic theatre' to explore issues of gender and sexuality. From A Mouthful of Birds (1986) onwards, she began to experiment with forms of dance-theatre, incorporating techniques developed from the performance tradition initiated by Antonin Artaud with his 'Theatre of Cruelty'. This move away from a clear Fabel dramaturgy towards increasingly fragmented and surrealistic narratives characterises her work as postmodernist.
Prizes and awards
Churchill has received much recognition, including the following awards:
1958 Sunday Times/National Union of Students Drama Festival Award Downstairs
1961 Richard Hillary Memorial Prize
1981 Obie Award for Playwriting, Cloud Nine
1982 Obie Award for Playwriting, Top Girls
1983 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (runner-up), Top Girls
1984 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Fen
1987 Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy of the Year, Serious Money
1987 Obie Award for Best New Play, Serious Money
1987 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Serious Money
1988 Laurence Olivier/BBC Award for Best New Play, Serious Money
2001 Obie Sustained Achievement Award
2010 Inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
Plays
Downstairs (1958)
You've No Need to be Frightened (1959?)
Having a Wonderful Time (1960)
Easy Death (1960)
The Ants, radio drama (1962)
Lovesick, radio drama (1969)
Identical Twins (1960)
Abortive, radio drama (1971)
Not Not Not Not Not Enough Oxygen, radio drama (1971)
Owners (1972)
Schreber's Nervous Illness, radio drama (1972) – based on Memoirs of My Nervous Illness
The Hospital at the Time of the Revolution (written 1972)
The Judge's Wife, radio drama (1972)
Moving Clocks Go Slow, (1973)
Turkish Delight, television drama (1973)
Objections to Sex and Violence (1975)
Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1976) [7]
Vinegar Tom (1976)
Traps (1976)
The After-Dinner Joke, television drama (1978)
Seagulls (written 1978)
Cloud Nine (1979)
Three More Sleepless Nights (1980)
Top Girls (1982)
Crimes, television drama (1982)
Fen (1983)
Softcops (1984)
A Mouthful of Birds (1986)
A Heart's Desire (1987)[18]
Serious Money (1987)
Ice Cream (1989)
Hot Fudge (1989)
Mad Forest (1990)
Lives of the Great Poisoners (1991)
The Skriker (1994)
Blue Heart (1997)
Hotel (1997)
This is a Chair (1999)
Far Away (2000)
Thyestes (2001) – translation of Seneca's tragedy
A Number (2002)
A Dream Play (2005) – translation of August Strindberg's play
Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? (2006)
Seven Jewish Children – a play for Gaza (2009)
Love and Information (2012)
Ding Dong the Wicked (2013)
Here We Go (play) (2015)
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caryl_Ch...
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 3, 2018
A complicated volume of mostly collaborative work, difficult to read, difficult to get any sense of what it felt like to watch it. Definitely not the place to start if you're new to Caryl Churchill.
A Mouthful of Birds: 2/5 - Even by Churchillian standards this was largely incomprehensible.
Icecream: 3/5 - More familiar Churchill territory, a black comedy with a considerable helping of Anglo-American politics, albeit in a rather heavy handed way.
Mad Forest: 2.5/5 - This era of Churchill, as I'm discovering, is massively informed by huge collaborations, resulting in texts that really cannot be transformed into anything else, and consequently, though they may have been electric in performance (Mad Forest dramatises the collapse of communism in Romania, a mere 6 months after it had happened) they are really difficult on the page.
Lives of the Great Poisoners: 2.5/5 - Basically the same as how I felt after Mad Forest.
The Skriker: 4/5 - Oh now that's more like it. Ingenious language, fucked-up folk stuff, and *that* character.
Thyestes: 4.5/5 - Well that was unexpected. Now I want Churchill to translate everything.
A Mouthful of Birds: 2/5 - Even by Churchillian standards this was largely incomprehensible.
Icecream: 3/5 - More familiar Churchill territory, a black comedy with a considerable helping of Anglo-American politics, albeit in a rather heavy handed way.
Mad Forest: 2.5/5 - This era of Churchill, as I'm discovering, is massively informed by huge collaborations, resulting in texts that really cannot be transformed into anything else, and consequently, though they may have been electric in performance (Mad Forest dramatises the collapse of communism in Romania, a mere 6 months after it had happened) they are really difficult on the page.
Lives of the Great Poisoners: 2.5/5 - Basically the same as how I felt after Mad Forest.
The Skriker: 4/5 - Oh now that's more like it. Ingenious language, fucked-up folk stuff, and *that* character.
Thyestes: 4.5/5 - Well that was unexpected. Now I want Churchill to translate everything.
January 8, 2013
I've always wanted to read Cloud9 and I just got a hold of Icecream. It was so bizarre that I really had little-to know idea what was really meant to be understood. i'd love to have a discussion about this play, or to have someone more perceptive than me explain what some of the playwrights intentions were. It seems to be about the importance of family, and whether or not that level of importance grows or shrinks after they are dead.
August 22, 2020
Read: "A Mouthful of Birds" (***) and "The Skriker" (*****). "Skriker" terrifies with Joycean wordplay and dark fairy underworld. Research inspired by "Here She Comes" of By Jove Theatre Company: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf-1W...
April 15, 2021
The Mad Forest **** -- This reminded me of Brecht’s Fear and Misery in the Third Reich, which features vignettes of everyday life of the German people trying to live in an irrational system, and Peter Weiss’ The Investigation which is simply excerpts from the Auschwitz trials.
Churchill weaves together vignettes of two families dealing with life in the Communist regime and life immediately after it’s fall. It’s very well done (though I have no idea how this is staged – readers are given very little description of the stage).
There are some fantasy elements (vampire, angel, talking dog) that don’t really add a whole lot, but aren’t otherwise too distracting. There’s also a rather long section, based on interviews with Romanians, describing the revolution.
Overall, the play is very powerful. The racism against the Hungarians gives it an extra dose of reality. On stage, however, I think it would be very long. I’m not sure if the fantasy and the interview material really adds a lot. The interviews are more like documentary material – interesting but I don’t know how much it adds to the story.
I highly recommend this play.
The Skriker *** -- I like drama that extends the boundaries – that experiments with language and narrative. The danger is that the experimentation drifts into self-indulgence. The work becomes some kind of idiosyncratic piece that only means anything to the artist.
The Skriker starts off with some very strange language. It goes on a little too long for my taste, but it is myriad of puns and free associations that creates a bizarre and dizzying world. What happens after that, is not much clearer.
I read that this is about the destruction of our environment. I totally missed that. Or the struggle against patriarchy. I didn’t catch that either. Lack of meaning in life. Maybe. A critique of language and narrative. That seems a little closer.
I saw someone describe it thus: “… the Skriker is whatever you think it is, and it is nothing that you think it is. I know what I think, but the brilliance of Churchill is that the Skriker is whatever we each think it to be, and also not.” This is distinctly not helpful.
To me, it is an apocalyptic, absurdist work about the devouring insecurities and emotional disturbances humans face/feel.
Overall, I was fascinated by the Skirker’s language at the beginning. But the play, the characters and the language become tedious on the page. Perhaps in person the strange spectacle enlivens it.
Thyestes*** -- This is an excellent translation of one of Seneca’s better plays. Churchill’s introduction and her explanation of the translation process is outstanding. The one thing she fails to mention – and to account for in her translation – is that Seneca’s original is written in rhythmic verse. While I enjoyed the taut directness of her free verse/stacked prose translation, she completely ignored the rhythmic beat of the original as if that was unimportant. I highly recommend this translation to anyone interested in reading Seneca.
Churchill weaves together vignettes of two families dealing with life in the Communist regime and life immediately after it’s fall. It’s very well done (though I have no idea how this is staged – readers are given very little description of the stage).
There are some fantasy elements (vampire, angel, talking dog) that don’t really add a whole lot, but aren’t otherwise too distracting. There’s also a rather long section, based on interviews with Romanians, describing the revolution.
Overall, the play is very powerful. The racism against the Hungarians gives it an extra dose of reality. On stage, however, I think it would be very long. I’m not sure if the fantasy and the interview material really adds a lot. The interviews are more like documentary material – interesting but I don’t know how much it adds to the story.
I highly recommend this play.
The Skriker *** -- I like drama that extends the boundaries – that experiments with language and narrative. The danger is that the experimentation drifts into self-indulgence. The work becomes some kind of idiosyncratic piece that only means anything to the artist.
The Skriker starts off with some very strange language. It goes on a little too long for my taste, but it is myriad of puns and free associations that creates a bizarre and dizzying world. What happens after that, is not much clearer.
I read that this is about the destruction of our environment. I totally missed that. Or the struggle against patriarchy. I didn’t catch that either. Lack of meaning in life. Maybe. A critique of language and narrative. That seems a little closer.
I saw someone describe it thus: “… the Skriker is whatever you think it is, and it is nothing that you think it is. I know what I think, but the brilliance of Churchill is that the Skriker is whatever we each think it to be, and also not.” This is distinctly not helpful.
To me, it is an apocalyptic, absurdist work about the devouring insecurities and emotional disturbances humans face/feel.
Overall, I was fascinated by the Skirker’s language at the beginning. But the play, the characters and the language become tedious on the page. Perhaps in person the strange spectacle enlivens it.
Thyestes*** -- This is an excellent translation of one of Seneca’s better plays. Churchill’s introduction and her explanation of the translation process is outstanding. The one thing she fails to mention – and to account for in her translation – is that Seneca’s original is written in rhythmic verse. While I enjoyed the taut directness of her free verse/stacked prose translation, she completely ignored the rhythmic beat of the original as if that was unimportant. I highly recommend this translation to anyone interested in reading Seneca.
August 24, 2009
Icecream: 4
Mad Forrest: 4.5
Thyestes: 2
The Skriker: 3
Lives of the Great Poisoners: impossible to say without seeing it
A Mouthful of Birds: 3
but all are definately worth the read
Mad Forrest: 4.5
Thyestes: 2
The Skriker: 3
Lives of the Great Poisoners: impossible to say without seeing it
A Mouthful of Birds: 3
but all are definately worth the read
Currently reading
August 27, 2012Half-way through the first play, I believe I have finally found a female version of Beckett, and it makes me glad!
July 8, 2014
hella weird
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews