Mamet Goes Wildeing

By David Kaufman

This article appeared in the December 30, 2002 edition of The Nation.

December 12, 2002

The great disparity in the critical reaction to Caryl Churchill's Far Away, now playing Off Broadway, serves to remind us that opinions are just that--neither right nor wrong, but rather well argued or not. However, if one mark of the true artist is the willingness to take risks and to venture into uncharted territory, then Churchill is the genuine article. For more than two decades, almost every offering by this fiercely political British playwright has been innovative and intellectually stimulating.

Churchill quickly established herself more than twenty years ago with Cloud Nine. In this early work, the characters age just twenty-five years between Acts One and Two, even though the first is set in British colonial Africa in the 1880s and the second in a London park a century later. To add that Cloud 9 calls for its cast members to cross-dress should begin to suggest one of the play's implicit messages: that in spite of our self-proclaimed sexual liberation, our generation is every bit as confused about gender issues and sexuality as the Victorians were.

Churchill's theatrical imagination took even greater historical leaps in her subsequent play, Top Girls (1982). By bringing together a fantastic assortment of significant figures at the same dinner table (including a thirteenth-century Japanese courtesan, a Victorian female explorer, the ninth-century Pope Joan and a very contemporary woman who relinquished nearly everything worthwhile in her climb up the corporate ladder), the provocative Churchill got to have her feminist cake and criticize it too.

Subscriber Login

4 ISSUES FREE

Subscribe Now!

The only way to read this article and the full contents of each week's issue of The Nation online is by subscribing to the magazine. Subscribe now and read this article -- and every article published since for the past five years -- right now.

There's no obligation -- try The Nation for four weeks free.

.

About David Kaufman

David Kaufman has covered theater for the Daily News, Downtown and other publications. His first book, Ridiculous! The Theatrical Life and Times of Charles Ludlam (Applause Books), has just won both the Theatre Library Association's George Freedley Award for Oustanding Theater Book of the Year and the LAMBDA Literary Award for Biography. more...
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement

Blogs

» The Beat

House Passes Health Reform, But Without Reproductive Rights | Pelosi secures necessary votes, but only after allowing anti-choice Dems to bar access to abortion in new programs.
John Nichols
166 Comments

» Editor's Cut

Around The Nation | Obama, one year on. Plus: Jeremy Scahill takes your questions, and a new video series from The Nation.
Katrina vanden Heuvel
36 Comments

» The Notion

Injustice in Illinois | Prosecutors in Illinois should be more concerned with an innocent man behind bars than journalism students' grades.
Ari Berman
30 Comments

» The Dreyfuss Report

Obama Fails in Middle East | Clinton delivers the ultimate diss to Abbas.
Robert Dreyfuss
163 Comments

» Act Now!

Equality Across America | This week, young LBGT activists are staging a National Week of Initiative.
Peter Rothberg
16 Comments

» Altercation

Slacker Thursday | Dying laptops, recapping the election, the Dow, and the Yankees with the World Series.
Eric Alterman