Although it was obvious from her early radio play The Ants (1962) that Caryl Churchill could write good dialogue, she had difficulty translating that talent to a stage where she would be noticed. Neve...
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The interviewers Kathleen Betsko and Rachel Koenig are both American drama critics; Emily Mann is an American playwright. The following is taken from a two-part interview, first with Betsko and Koenig...
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In the following review, Barnes deems the acting superb in the New York production and considers Churchill a "playwright to cherish and explore. "
Caryl Churchill's new play Top G...
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Brown is an American educator and critic who specializes in feminist critical theory, concentrating on the relationship between gender and class. In the excerpted essay below, she argues that Top Girl...
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The Joint Stock production of Fen debuted in London in February 1983 and played at the Almeida Theatre until March, when it began a tour that included a run at New York's Public Theatre. In the...
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Below, Kalem offers a laudatory assessment of Fen's New York production, concluding: "The unifying element is a love story played out against a landscape of doom. "
Tiny spires of...
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Below, Gold asserts that the atmosphere overwhelms the message in Fen.
A particular way of life, a distinct sense of place—these aren't the things we usually expect to discover at the th...
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Rabillard is a Canadian educator and author of works on modern drama. In the following essay, she examines Fen within the context of "ecofeminism"—Churchill's attempt to &#...
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Below, Solomon provides an overview of Churchill's writing career, her dramatic technique, and her incorporation of socialist-feminist politics into her works.
Whether Caryl Churchill writes ab...
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Cloud Nine was a collaborative effort between Churchill and the Joint Stock Company, whose director was Max Stafford-Clark. It received its first performances in the English provinces before moving to...
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In the following essay, Keyssar analyzes the unconventional political and gender-based aspects of Churchill's plays and examines the influences and collaboration Churchill received during the w...
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In the following review, Caplan praises Churchill's writing and Kathryn Hunter's acting in The Skriker, but complains that the staging is too small in scale and that the direction and ch...
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In the following review, Norden praises Churchill's imagination and dialogue in The Skriker but finds the staging disappointing and at times distracting.
Even in her apparently most naturalisti...
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In the following essay, Rabillard examines the concepts of feminism, ecology, and socialism in Churchill's Fen.
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Caryl Churchill is, in the best sense, a playwright of ideas. In her early work...
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In the following mixed review of Hotel, a coupling of Churchill's two short plays Eight Rooms and Two Nights, Gee applauds the seamless and imaginative Eight Rooms, but describes Two Nights as ...
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In the following essay, Aston discusses the collaboration and research techniques Churchill employed while writing Fen, Serious Money, and Mad Forest.
Research has always been important to Caryl Churc...
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In the following review of Blue Heart, a double-bill of Churchill's one-act plays Heart's Desire and Blue Kettle, Wolf highly commends Churchill's ingenuity as a writer and her vi...
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In the following essay, Reinelt analyzes the various theatrical forms and styles Churchill uses to challenge accepted norms in politics, economics, and race relations.
Caryl Churchill is arguably the ...
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In the following essay, Brown explores the influence that the Taoist yin and yang principles, Theravada and Zen Buddhist ideologies, and Jain beliefs each have on Churchill's writing.
In an int...
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In the following laudatory review, Brustein praises Churchill's coupling of two plays Hot Fudge with Ice Cream.
Ice Cream with Hot Fudge at the New York Public's Newman Theater is actual...
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In the following mixed review of Mad Forest, Crane compliments Churchill's imagery and control yet contends that key information is missing from the play.
The subject of Mad Forest is the Roman...
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In the following review, Weales lauds the political satire evident in Churchill's Mad Forest.
In one of the most unusual and quietly theatrical scenes in Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest, a ...
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In the following essay, Mitchell argues that the multi-character perspectives in Mad Forest enable Churchill to manifest the emotional and political undercurrents, distrust in a postcolonial society, ...
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In the following essay, Kritzer analyzes the theme of insanity in relation to self-identity and oppression in Churchill's Lovesick, Schreber's Nervous Illness, The Hospital at the Time o...
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Critical Essay by Edith Oliver
In a short-lived curiosity from England—"Owners," by Caryl Churchill—we had on hand a promising dramatist…. The play is a farce about ...
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Critical Essay by Clive Barnes
[Churchill] is probably more popular in London than in N.Y. and—despite her strong political impulses—at times, accents and places apart, she proves more l...
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Critical Essay by Irving Wardle
Like Owners, Caryl Churchill's [Objections to Sex and Violence] carries a portmanteau title. It is a danger sign. Ownership is a fascinating and timely theme, op...
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Critical Essay by John Simon
The unsuccessful work of a gifted and pungent playwright, [Fen] is eminently watchable, full of sharp, stinging, tragicomic moments that, however, refuse to coalesce. Shap...
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Critical Essay by Giles Gordon
[Softcops is] a desperately serious treatise, (and to emphasise that, there's no interval) about crime, punishment and male society. Set in 19th-century France, i...
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Critical Essay by Rosalind Carne
So intent is [Churchill in Softcops] on stating her message that every whiff of humour is imbued with a grim sense of its sinister implications…. [The] result i...
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Critical Essay by Harold Hobson
A shabby seaside lodging house; a meek little man bitterly hurt when as a birthday present he is given a child's toy drum; two visitors, one fast-talking, the ot...
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Critical Essay by W Stephen Gilbert
Knowing her apprenticeship in radio, I hope it doesn't seem too easy a cavil to say that Caryl Churchill's [Objections to Sex and Violence] feels more...
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Critical Essay by J. W. Lambert
Objections to Sex and Violence was … something of a morality play without a moral. Its characters, that is to say, are all firmly representative of some class or...
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Critical Essay by Donald Campbell
If I were to be asked to list the plays which have given me most satisfaction this year, [Light Shining in Buckinghamshire] would come pretty high on the list. Two fe...
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Critical Essay by David Zane Mairowitz
In the opening moments of Light Shining In Buckinghamshire Caryl Churchill gets her sharpened hook into God—the God who first supports Charles I against P...
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Critical Essay by W Stephen Gilbert
[Traps] has a title which seems to promise more than the play delivers—or possibly less than the play delivers. Elliptically structured, it features one retu...
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The question of how body-language and space are used in Caryl Churchill's `Top Girls' is interesting. A traditional view exists that a play is dictated by the text to the extent that the actors ought ...
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Caryl Churchill
