Two notorious areas of scarcity in English theatre – women playwrights and roles for older actresses – are simultaneously redressed in Caryl Churchill’s new drama, Escaped Alone, for which a writer whose recent scripts have featured dialogue with no identified characters, specifically requests four women of “at least 70”.Impressively prolific in her own seventy-eighth year, Churchill was represented at London’s National Theatre last November with Here We Go, a triptych of scenes relating to the end of an individual life, and Escaped Alone makes these reflections on finality global.In a brightly sunlit garden under a darkly rain-laden sky, a passer-by, Mrs Jarrett, joins three female retirees: an ex-doctor, a former hairdresser and another who spent time