far from the mark

Yesterday was Mom’s birthday (she now only gets younger apparently) and her wish was to see a play at the local Questors Theatre. Had she warned me that it was an offering by Caryl Churchill, I may have cautioned her as to the bizarre nature of this playwright’s works. In my ignorance, I merely agreed and made no further enquiries into what we were going to see.
The play, entitled ‘Far Away’, focuses on inhumanity and compares it to the hat-making process. The highlight was watching the ‘hat parade’ where extras were tied together, adorned with wacky hand-made hats, supposedly on their way to being burned to death. I’m tempted to use the term ‘out-there’ but it doesn’t really encompass how unfathomable this piece is. If not for the synopsis in the program (which I wish I had read before the show) my mother and I would still be furrowing our brow in intense contemplation. My 10 year old brother, on the other hand, was convinced that he had captured what the writer was trying to convey but on our appeal for his insight was disinterested in sharing.
At the very least it gave me something to write about, but, honestly, thoughts that deep go beyond conventional appeal and then who are you really writing for? I’m all for detouring mainstream ideas, but there is art and then there isn’t. This time the audience were left ‘Far Away’ asking ‘what the??’.