Plays 1: Owners / Traps / Vinegar Tom / Light Shining in Buckinghamshire / Cloud Nine

by Caryl Churchill

The plays in this volume represent the best of Churchill's writing up to and including her emergence onto the international theatre scene with Cloud Nine. The volume also contains a new introduction by the author as well as short prefaces to each play.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre, British Literature, Fiction, 20th Century, Classics

320 pages, Paperback

First published May 29, 1985

About the author

Caryl 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...

Reviews

[Phillip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Owners: I'm not sure whether Churchill had actually read Erich Fromm's work before this play came out, but his ideas were definitely in the zeitgeist in the early 1970s. This play seems like an almost perfect enactment of some of the principles in his book To Have or to Be (which didn't come out until 1976, so Churchill obviously hadn't read that one when Owners premiered in 1972). The play centers around the capitalist ethos of ownership, beginning with Clegg's patriarchal attitude of ownership over his wife Marion, even though she is vastly more financially successful than he is--we open on the last day his butcher shop is in operation, whereas she is making a fortune in property speculation in the London housing market. For all Marion's financial success and accumulation of property, she is fundamentally unhappy. Clegg is also fundamentally unhappy because he is obsessed with the idea of Marion as his property, and he is convinced she is cheating on him (or, as he would conceptualize it, that some other man is stealing his property), and so he uses the most crass patriarchal attitudes and sexual exploitation of Lisa in order to feel like a "man" who owns things (i.e., a successful capitalist man). Lisa is married to Alec, and they are a bit more complex in terms of where they fit into the capitalist schema. Lisa seems to want financial success and material comfort, but ultimately when Marion tricks her into giving up custody of Lisa's newly born baby, Lisa's character becomes much clearer as she becomes obsessed with getting her baby back. She places value primarily on familial, loving, and interpersonal relationships. Alec, for his part, is one of the most interesting characters simply because he seems to have gone through depression and come out abandoning all sense of transcendent values. For instance, at one point he tells Marion that he had desperately wanted to go see a beach with grey skies and gritty sand, and when he got there what he found was a beach with grey skies and gritty sand. Marion misunderstands, thinking he was disappointed with the ordinariness of the experience, but actually what appealed to Alec was the thing in itself--simply the ordinariness of the beach, stripped of any higher/imposed values is what mattered. Marion is in love with Alec, and she repeatedly offers him money, material comfort, etc. to run away with her, and she seems incapable of understanding that those things simply don't motivate him. He is so at peace, so indifferent to whatever happens, that money simply doesn't motivate him. Nor is he hurt when Clegg extorts sex from Lisa under the false pretext that he will get her baby back from Marion. Nor does it matter much to Alec when Marion refuses to give the baby back, even though Lisa is desperate to get her child. But Marion's refusal is interesting because she claims she wants the baby so she can own a piece of Alec--so this is not about an actual interpersonal relationship with the baby, or about the experience of motherhood, or anything like that; this is another form of ownership, which--like her properties and money--fundamentally fails to make Marion happy.
https://youtu.be/Oo776lXdW1c

Traps:

Vinegar Tom: During the 1970s, feminists got really interested in witches, wicca, pre-Christian religion, etc. and this play is part of that trend. One of the striking things Churchill says in the intro published in this version is that she wanted to write a play about the witch hunts of the seventeenth century, but without any witches in it. What the play effectively deals with is the hysteria around witches, and how it magnified any slight deviation from an ideal image of womanhood--submissive, sexually restrained, married, etc.--into a symbol of satanic possession. Women in the play are accused of causing all kinds of negative natural phenomena, and no real evidence is presented by the accusers beyond correlation. For instance, Joan is an older widow whose neighbors refuse to lend her yeast, driving her away from their farm. So she begins randomly cursing their stuff, like their cows and their butter. Then when the cows get sick (apparently an illness that had afflicted their cows previously) and the butter won't solidify (probably related to the gastrointestinal disease the cows have), they determine that Joan is a witch. This trend of determining women are witches without any solid evidence continues when a witch finder arrives. He uses a particular technique of pricking the suspect all over her body until he finds a spot that doesn't bleed and/or is insensitive to pain--the kind of spot that naturally occurs on human bodies, especially as they age. While he finds such a spot on Joan and thereby categorically (in his mind) proves that she's a witch, he is unable to find a spot like this on her daughter Alice's body, but he still decides that she's a witch anyway.
https://youtu.be/8r3zCvvZw4Y

Light Shining in Buckinghamshire: This is an amazing play, which moves in a kind of kaleidoscope way through a lot of the religious, political, and gender debates going on during the English Civil War. It was a time of incredible upheaval, during which many people fervently thought that the world was going to end with Christ's return--and there were a lot of different ideas about what should be done to prepare for that return. There are Puritans who wanted a strict, Calvinist version of Christianity, which often remained relatively hierarchical. There were Anglicans, more likely to associate with the Cavaliers and Royalist side, or at the very least to support a Parliamentary system largely preserving the pre-Civil War social order. And there were "pragmatists" on the Parliamentarian side, people like Cromwell, who essentially restored the hierarchies and laws protecting the powerful as soon as they became the powerful.
But there were also groups who believed in liberatory politics and theology. This play deals with three of the major groups: the Levellers, the Diggers, and the Ranters. The Levellers were political radicals who believed in equal political representation for all men (rarely women), regardless of whether or not they owned property. In other words, they opposed social hierarchies, instead proposing that those hierarchies be leveled. To the left of them were the Diggers, inspired primarily by the works of Gerard Winstanley (probably my favorite Christian theologian). The Diggers were Christian communists, who believed that all property should be owned communally because God entrusted the earth to humanity as its common inheritance. So, they set up a collective on St. George's Hill in Surrey, where the Diggers worked the land together and shared all their crops. However, the Diggers were repeatedly attacked by landlords, hired men, and soldiers, who eventually crushed the Digger movement. Slightly after the Diggers were crushed, the Ranters arose as a new sect that held that God was in each aspect of creations--including in all people--and therefore there was no sin, there was no damnation (apart from rejecting one's own godliness), and one could eat, drink, and be merry because God/you were doing so and it therefore was not morally wrong. They were anarchic, hedonistic, and creative in a world that demanded submission to social order and religiously inspired suffering.
https://youtu.be/nkpE3idnKd0

Cloud Nine: This is one of my absolute favorite plays. I've had the good fortune to see it performed twice, and it's an amazing play both to read and to watch. This is a play of two halves, with the first one more interesting in my opinion. It is set in British colonial Africa, following the rigidly patriarchal and racist Clive, who runs his family with an iron fist. His wife Betty is played by a male actor, their Black servant Joshua is played by a white actor, their son Edward is played by a female actor, and their daughter Victoria is played by a dummy. So right from the opening song in which Clive introduces his family, it's clear that this is a deeply Brechtian performance, rejecting the tenets of naturalism. And that increasingly makes sense as the play shows virtually every character in the first half to be somehow sexually heterodox. Clive is perhaps straightest, as he merely has an extramarital affair (though he then hypocritically blames his wife when she kisses the adventurer Harry Bagley, who comes to visit them). Betty has a quasi-affair with Edward's governess, Ellen, though Betty doesn't seem to fully understand Ellen's desire. But Harry Bagley outs himself as gay when Clive makes a big speech about the beauty of the friendship between men, which Harry misinterprets. Though we also learn that Harry and Edward have had sex, and that Harry and Joshua likely have as well.
The second half of the play is set in 1970s London, with Betty, Edward, and Victoria all aged 25 years, despite it being a century of chronological time. Edward is openly gay now, though Betty is reluctant to discuss that openly--she still lives under the psychological shadow of her now dead husband and his authoritarian patriarchal style. This second half of the play focuses more on the difficulty of finding and sustaining meaningful relationships, either gay or straight. One particularly interesting element of the second half is that it does feature a picnic that involves an attempt to conjure an ancestral goddess, plus an orgy.
https://youtu.be/5-HNxPRW4pg

Original Review: Churchill is certainly one of the great feminist dramatists, and one of the great modern British dramatists. Cloud Nine is a masterpiece and deservedly brought her international acclaim. Its commentary on gender, sexualities, racial issues, colonialism, and power is fascinating because it seeks to destabilize these categories while simultaneuously showing how powerfully affective they are.
The other plays in this collection are also good. I particularly liked Vinegar Tom and Light Shining in Buckinhamshire (I think I got that title right). These plays--similarly to Cloud Nine--reimagine a historical period or element to deal both with historical and contemporary concerns. Vinegar Tom deals with gender roles, power, violence, and humiliation during the period of English witch trials in the 16th century, which implicitly (and at times explicitly) comments on the continuing social construction of proper femininity and the punishments for failing to meet those standards. Buckinghamshire uses the millenian rhetoric of the English civil war as a jumping off point for considering the failure of revolutionary movements when revolutionary leadership suddenly occupies a position of power, and the limits of faith in a world marked by exploitation, betrayal, and a seemingly endless wait for the second coming when all problems will be swept away.

[lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Blood every month, and no way out of that but to be sick and swell up, and no way out of that but pain. No way out of all that till we're old and that's worse."

[Magdalena · Rating 1 out of 5]

Never in my life have I read such a tosh!!!

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

The four plays leading up to Churchill's first masterwork "Cloud Nine" tell an interesting story. There's the subversively funny "Owners" (admittedly indebted to Orton), the strangely cryptic "Traps" (which reminds me of Shepard's "Action" from a few years before), her breakthrough ensemble piece "Vinegar Tom," then the more deliberate, less effective "Light Shining in Buckinghamshire." Once Churchill clicked with "Cloud Nine," she went on to churn out out a series of stunning plays: "Top Girls," "The Skriker, "A Number," "Love and Information"... It's really fun to see how it all began.

[Mic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ho letto Light Shining in Buckinghamshire e Vinegar Tom per preparare un esame universitario.

Le due opere non sono storie intricate con mille colpi di scena, ma mirano in modo molto diretto a mostrare la situazione di determinate persone in un preciso momento storico.

Light Shining in Buckinghamshire è ambientata durante la prima rivoluzione inglese ed è incentrata su digger, leveller e ranter, che danno le proprie opinioni politico-religiose in base a ciò che gli accade. Non c'è una vera e propria trama, si tratta di piccole scene distaccate, su vari personaggi che poi si incontreranno e discuteranno delle proprie idee. Caryl e la sua compagnia ci tengono a mostrarsi femministe anche in un'opera come questa: interessante il personaggio di Hoskins, predicatrice che non ha paura di aprire bocca nonostante alle donne non fosse nemmeno consentito parlare in chiesa.

Vinegar Tom, invece, è ambientata nel periodo della caccia alle streghe. Quest'opera mira a mostrare le varie situazioni in cui le donne potevano trovarsi (da chi viene accusata di stregoneria, a chi viene considerata isterica perché non vuole sposarsi) e come nessuna di loro avesse davvero possibilità di salvarsi se non cedere alle leggi di quella società (la morte, e il matrimonio). Vengono ovviamente ben illustrati i metodi con cui le donne venivano torturate per capire se fossero streghe o meno, e le varie dicerie su come queste venissero accompagnate da famigli (da qui il titolo dell'opera: Vinegar Tom è un vecchio gatto nero che accompagna una presunta strega).

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cloud Nine *** -- This is a creative and jarring work about people being prevented from living the life and the playing the role that they feel most suited. The play starts in Victorian South Africa where the moral order has placed nearly everyone in roles they are little suited for. The second half the play takes place a hundred years later, and documents the transition to a more open (but not perfect) society in which people are more free to choose their paths/roles. The cross-gender/cross-racial casting along with the doubling makes this jarring experience to see in person, tearing down the conventional cliches.

[Kassandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Light Shining in Buckinghamshire" is brilliant. No excuse, though, for the blackface in "Cloud Nine".

[Mike Leitch]

Finished another Churchill collection with the difficult play Traps.

[Hannah]

read "Vinegar Tom"

[eleanor · Rating 4 out of 5]

vinegar tom: if burn the witch by radiohead was a play

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful collection of the early works from the greatest playwright of her generation. 'Owners' displays Churchill's acerbic, cynical, bleak leftist dark humor, and 'Traps' hints at the stylistic and formalist radicalism she would come to explore in almost every play. 'Vinegar Tom' is her feminist, English (better) 'The Crucible'. The collection reaches a high point with the last two plays: 'Light Shining in Buckinghamshire' draws a moment in the English Civil War when a progressive Christian communist movement almost won the day before being squashed by landowners; 'Cloud 9' explores the dark side of human sexuality and gender roles through the prism of colonialism. Not always an easy read, Churchill's work is always exciting and challenging, plus her command of language is dazzlingly easy and un-showy.

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book of Churchill's early plays seem to show her trying out her literary potential in various areas - historical, experimental, even musical - leading up to Cloud Nine, by far the most accomplished and versatile play in this collection. Other good reads here though in Owners, a blackly funny, absurd-ish, domestic farce about property and capitalism; and Vinegar Tom, a feminist examination of the historical era of witch-hunting, complete with songs. She truly is one of the definitive dramatists of our age - always relevant and uncompromisingly brilliant.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

We read Vinegar Tom and a couple others out of this volume. I quite liked Vinegar Tom--though it's completely different from her later works. The rest didn't leave much of an impression on me.

[Rosemary]

Obviously I'm a fan... this book has a preface before
each play with notes on its development which are insightful.

[Shannon Tapia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Freaky Play and I loved it:)

[The reader in the haar · Rating 2 out of 5]

แฟมินิสต์นี่โอดครวญดี

[Iira · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ensimmäisiä Churchillin näytelmiä, yllättävän konventionaalisia ja loogisia. Myöhemmät varmaan ovat niitä antoisempia luettavia.