In the following essay, Reinelt analyzes the various theatrical forms and styles Churchill uses to challenge accepted norms in politics, economics, and race relations.

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 writing of these works.

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 the following essay, Aston discusses the collaboration and research techniques Churchill employed while writing Fen, Serious Money, and Mad Forest.

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 of the Revolution, and several other plays.

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, and a well-rounded picture of working- and middle-class Romanians before, during, and after the Revolution of 1989.

In the following essay, Rabillard examines the concepts of feminism, ecology, and socialism in Churchill's Fen.

Below, Solomon provides an overview of Churchill's writing career, her dramatic technique, and her incorporation of socialist-feminist politics into her works.

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 Girls is not, as many critics believe, a purely "feminist" drama, but rather a critical examination of the limitations of the women's movement and a call for the audience "to move beyond individual solutions to confront the larger contradictions created by a capitalistic patriarchy. &#x...

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 "merge ecological and socialist-feminist concerns. "

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 in February 1984, and then with Mann in November of that year. Churchill discusses her association with Joint Stock Theatre in London, her politics, and her writing career.

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 vision as a playwright.

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 Parliament, then sides with Parliament against the monarchy and, at all points, backs Property against the common people—and does not relent until she has pulled Him (decidedly Him in this case) down to face the social outcasts of the misfired English Revolution…. One of the dramatic virtues of this magnificent play is that it can assum...

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 following New York production review. Rich asserts that although the play is "at times the most off-putting" of Churchill's works, it is nevertheless "another confirmation that its author possesses one of the boldest theatrical imaginations to emerge in this decade. "

Below, Gold asserts that the atmosphere overwhelms the message in Fen.

In the following review, Norden praises Churchill's imagination and dialogue in The Skriker but finds the staging disappointing and at times distracting.

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 London's Royal Court Theatre; later, a slightly revised version of the play was presented in a New York production directed by Tommy Tune. In the following evaluation of a London performance, Jenkins offers a mixed opinion of the play, finding it moving at times but obscure in its overall meaning.

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 choreography seem at odds with each other.

In the following review, Weales lauds the political satire evident in Churchill's Mad Forest.

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 confusing and disorganized.

In the following review, Barnes deems the acting superb in the New York production and considers Churchill a "playwright to cherish and explore. "

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.

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. "

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 like a chamber work for voices than a fully realised dramatic event in a medium-sized theatre. Several commentators have noted an uneasiness about the setting up of the duologues which are the play's mode, a lack of conviction in the sheer mechanics of pushing a pair of speakers on and off. Conceived as a radio work, the play would easily...

In the following laudatory review, Brustein praises Churchill's coupling of two plays Hot Fudge with Ice Cream.

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, opening up a perspective of multiple ironies on the possession of property and the possession of people. Likewise sex and violence…. But meanwhile, who are the people in the play and what happens to them? To this question Miss Churchill returns a flimsy and long-winded answer. We are on a beach … where Jule, a taciturn urban terro...

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 attitude of mind, rather too much so for the good of the play, yet deployed with a short-term intelligence which makes them interesting moment-by-moment without leaving behind any clear impression of what Miss Churchill is saying, or indirectly expressing by their interplay. The scene is a rocky beach…. It is for some a place of escap...

The unsuccessful work of a gifted and pungent playwright, [Fen] is eminently watchable, full of sharp, stinging, tragicomic moments that, however, refuse to coalesce. Shapeliness, to be sure, is seldom what Miss Churchill is after; topsy-turvy jaggedness and intricately lacerating jests are her game. But however you go about it, impact is needed—particularly when political agitation for socialism is the purpose. Yet Fen, which examines the lives of a score of women and couple of men in East Anglia&#x...

[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 like an American playwright than most British. For her technique is firmly based on that kind of symbolic realism favored by so many American writers. Where most playwrights produce a form of dramatic portrait, Miss Churchill, and it can be seen in Cloud Nine and Top Girls as well as Fen, is attempting to suggest a landscape with figures. The...

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 is one of the least enjoyable evenings I can remember in three years' regular theatregoing. Enjoyment may not be mandatory, but there are few compensatory factors in Softcops; it keeps you guessing, and hoping, but consistently fails to provide what it promises…. [When] I left the theatre I felt as if I'd been mentally batt...

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 other viciously sinister; these things, when Harold Pinter's "The Birthday Party" received its famous first production, sent through one a surge of joy and wonder and awe at the revelation of a new dramatist of indisputable genius…. One has something of the same excitement in watching Caryl Churchill's "...

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 features of this production impressed me very much. First of all, there was the complexity of its concern; many important questions were raised and no trite answers offered. On the face of it an account of the English Revolution, this is in fact a genuine study of revolution itself, any revolution. When, towards the end, one of the actors suggest...

[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 returning and three regular communards plus a visiting couple. It also features a clock set at real time throughout and a setting … which is sited variously in town and country. I take it these things are not gratuitous; Churchill's purpose nonetheless remains obscure. Thus a character accounted dead soon returns without provocation of ...

[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, it features our old, ambiguous friend Vidocq …, master-crook turned top cop, and thus Miss Churchill—one of our very best playwrights—can debate as she will whether hierarchical society is responsible for the criminal, or the criminal for forcing society to punish him. The trouble is that the play is more illustrated lect...

In a short-lived curiosity from England—"Owners," by Caryl Churchill—we had on hand a promising dramatist…. The play is a farce about hatred, power, despair, baby-selling, arson, and murder (Joe Orton certainly released something in the British psyche) among some working-class people in a North London development. Marion, the despotic wife of a butcher, has very recently made a lot of money in real estate, and the story of her machinations and the anguish she causes those ...