At 81, Caryl Churchill is the greatest living English playwright apart from her nearly exact contemporary, Sir Tom Stoppard. Late-career dramatists often trade in fragments (Pinter, Beckett), but Stoppard has a new three-hour play, Leopoldstadt, opening in February, and Churchill offers, as the final piece in a four-premiere evening, Glass.

Glass. Kill. Bluebeard. Imp.
Toyal Court, London

Blood Wedding
Young Vic, London

‘Master Harold’ … and the boys
National Theatre, London

At 81, Caryl Churchill is the greatest living English playwright apart from her nearly exact contemporary, Sir Tom Stoppard. Late-career dramatists often trade in fragments (Pinter, Beckett), but Stoppard has a new three-hour play, Leopoldstadt, opening in February, and Churchill offers, as the final piece in a four-premiere evening, Glass. Kill. Bluebeard. Imp., what seems to me to the best English one-act play since Pinter’s A Kind of Alaska.

In fact Imp initially feels Pinteresque, as a late middle-aged brother and sister, Jimmy (Toby Jones) and Dot (Deborah Findlay) territorially trade grim confidences and long-running insults, while competing for the friendship of young visitors, Niamh (Louisa Harland) and Rob (Tom Mothersdale). But this scenario becomes distinctly Churchillian with the revelation that Dot has a bottle that she believes to contain the title character, a supernatural being bringing good luck if rubbed up the right way.

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