British playwright Caryl Churchill can pack more creepiness into 45 minutes than most writers can in a horror trilogy. Her play “Far Away” is a quick jab to the brain and the solar plexus, an insinuating little work that melds terror and whimsy in a way you have never seen before.
Brought to jolting life by an ideal cast of four, Studio Theatre’s Artistic Director Joy Zinoman and a superlative design team, “Far Away” delivers some of the most alarming and exquisite imagery you’re likely to see in Washington (or anywhere else, for that matter) in a production that burrows in your subconscious like a crisp nightmare.
Set in wartime somewhere in the 20th century, “Far Away” takes the idea that there is no refuge from battle to absurd, almost existential extremes. She does this by taking civilization’s fuzziest Hallmark card moments — a parade, a child’s visit to the home of loving relatives, first love, a young marriage — and subverts them so that our comfort zones are abolished.
Something as seemingly innocuous as wearing a fanciful hat carries grim connotations. Even the animals have taken sides — the cats have sided with the French, the deer have rediscovered “their gentle nature” and are with us, whoever that may be. Nature isn’t neutral either; “everything’s been recruited,” says Joan (Holly Twyford), and that includes noise, light, rivers and gravity.
In a handful of devastating vignettes, “Far Away” charts the crumbling of everything familiar and sane as the globe moves from order and social Darwinism to an inchoate chaos in which the human, animal and elemental worlds are at war with one another and with themselves. Everything is inverted; there is no sanctuary.
This descent is seen through the character of Joan, initially seen as a girl (Simone Grossman) who, with preternatural calm, tells her Aunt Harper (Mikel Sarah Lambert) of inadvertently witnessing grotesque acts performed by her unseen uncle in the dead of night.
Harper reacts as if Joan is describing a movie she has seen, being both maternal and a persistent brainwasher.
Cut to the future, where Joan obviously has suppressed the memory and is giddily relishing her first job in a utilitarian factory that makes the most outlandish of hats. Think of English designer Phillip Tracy’s millinery being done on a massive scale. Joan works alongside Todd (Matthew Montelongo), a crush soon to be her lover.
We soon find out what happens to the hats. In a sequence brought to brutal life by sound designer Gil Thompson, costumer Helen Q. Quang and set designer Debra Booth, the parades are a festive pre-ceremony to death, a Mad Hatter’s march to the ovens. It’s like watching a pool of blood bloom behind a victim’s head. You are repulsed and fascinated. That something this epic and eerie could be staged at the Milton, which is small by anyone’s standards, makes it even more astounding.
“The hats are ephemeral,” Joan burbles, a bit put out that their eccentric creations are burned along with the bodies. Even though she is part of “the system,” Joan is not safe, as the final vignette reveals.
Bloodied, beaten and traumatized by unseen forces, Joan and Todd take refuge at Harper’s, only to find that the apocalypse exists at home.
Visually and aurally stunning (Mr. Thompson’s clanging, assaulting sound effects enforce the play’s discordant mood), “Far Away” also boasts a quartet of assured performances. Miss Grossman exudes perception and deportment beyond her years as the young Joan, while Miss Lambert as the older aunt moves devastatingly from a kindhearted soul to something colder and deadlier by play’s end. Mr. Montelongo is greatly appealing as the grappling, fervent Todd, and Miss Twyford brilliantly articulates the hunted and haunted aspects of Joan’s personality.
With its echoes of George Orwell’s “1984” and William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies,” “Far Away” is a shuddery warning that the enemy is not in some far-off place, but within and without us.
****
WHAT: “Far Away” by Caryl Churchill
WHERE: Studio Theatre, 1333 P St. NW
WHEN: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Through May 9.
TICKETS: $33 to $45
PHONE: 202/332-3300
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