Plays ─ Four

Written over a period of ten years and evincing an extraordinary range of topics and techniques, this fourth volume of Caryl Churchill's collected plays confirms her standing as a playwright who is 'amongst the best half-dozen now writing' (The Times).
The first three were all premiered in 1997. After the music-theatre piece, Hotel, came three plays which, as Churchill herself says in her valuable introduction, all came from a similar mindset: they explore ways in which theatre can be undermined from within. This is a Chair is not about what it says it's about; and the double bill that makes up Blue Heart consists of a play that never finishes and a play that's got a virus.
Far Away (premiered in 2000) signals a move towards a powerfully unsettling combination of disconnectedness and passionate engagement with big issues: A Number (2002) starts with a man discovering he's been cloned, and Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? (2006) looks at the world's hate-filled love affair with America. The volume also includes Churchill's version of Strindberg's A Dream Play, made for the National Theatre in 2005.