Review: Escaped Alone and What If If Only at Royal Exchange Theatre is ‘a haunting collision of the intimate and the apocalyptic’

The Royal Exchange Theatre is no stranger to bold storytelling, but its latest double bill takes daring to a new level.

With Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone and What If If Only, the theatre presents a striking exploration of personal and global catastrophe, time’s relentless grip, and the quiet yet powerful voices of those too often overlooked.

Under the meticulous direction of Sarah Frankcom, these productions weave together the intimate and the apocalyptic, inviting audiences into worlds that are at once eerily familiar and profoundly unsettling.

Churchill’s signature blend of sharp wit, surrealism, and deep emotional resonance makes for a theatrical experience that lingers long after the lights dim.

Escaped Alone

The first short play, Escaped Alone is framed around four women in their seventies—Mrs. Jarrett (Maureen Beattie,) Sally (Margot Leicester), Lena (Souad Faress), and Vi (Annette Badland)—gather in a garden and converse about everyday life.

Their exchanges are fragmented, their sentences trailing into silence, embodying both familiarity and restraint. But every so often, Mrs. Jarrett steps forward to deliver a monologue that plunges the audience into a dystopian nightmare.

These visions of societal and environmental breakdown are darkly satirical—economic systems devouring themselves, the rich buying gas masks in designer colours, and the obese selling parts of their own bodies to survive.

Mrs Jarrett’s dystopian future

The juxtaposition between these two worlds—the idle chat in the garden and the horrors Mrs Jarrett recounts—is where Escaped Alone finds its devastating power. The seemingly mundane discussions, from TV shows to local shops, take on an eerie significance.

The women’s personal struggles—depression, phobias, guilt—slowly surface, making clear that catastrophe is not only external but also deeply personal.

Visually, the production leans into stark contrasts. Rose Revitt’s set and lighting design create a mind-space where the every day and the apocalyptic exist side by side.

What do we perceive here?

Mrs. Jarrett’s monologues are delivered in a darkness edged with a spotlit lights, that intensifying the urgency of her words. I am not sure if I imagined it but I kept hearing phone beeps. The sound design was really eerie, drawing you in, and creating uncertainty in what was being perceived.

Performance-wise, the cast delivers Churchill’s text with a musicality that highlights both its humour and its horror.

Maureen Beattie brings an unnerving detachment to Mrs. Jarrett’s speeches, her delivery eerily calm despite the chaos she describes. Souad Faress as Lena masterfully portrays a woman weighed down by depression, while Margot Leicester as Sally captures the precise neuroses and internalised fears of a woman unable to escape her own anxieties.

Annette Badland as Vi is especially moving in her portrayal of survivor’s guilt, her performance both delicate and haunting.

This production of Escaped Alone is both a warning and a mirror, reflecting the absurdity of our world while forcing us to confront its most terrifying possibilities. It is a work of quiet revolution—one that assumes older women’s voices not as an anomaly, but as central to our understanding of past, present, and future.

As Churchill suggests, whatever happens to us, we won’t get out of it alone.

What If If only

The second half of the show pivots to another of Caryl Churchill’s Short plays, What If If Only.

What If If Only is based around a widow who sits eating dinner wondering if her deceased partner could return. These thoughts summon different ‘futures’ who might have been. This play provokes us to consider all those times when humans might have done things differently.

Caryl Churchill’s What If If Only is a theatrical miniature with a vast emotional range, and the Royal Exchange Theatre’s production brings her compact yet profound meditation on grief, time, and possibility to life with quiet power.

Churchill’s play distils complex themes into a tight, poetic structure. The play follows a grieving protagonist (Danielle Henry) who, like a modern-day Scrooge, is visited by spectral presences(Future – played by Annette Badland) that present alternate versions of pasts and futures—some heart-wrenching, others unnervingly absurd.

While Churchill’s text is famously sparse and suggestive, this production, under sensitive direction, maximises every moment with precision and emotional weight.

Danielle Henry delivered a compelling and grounded performance, imbuing her role with a deep vulnerability that made the play’s exploration of loss all the more affecting.

Opposite her, Lamin Touray, as the Present, provided a measured and poignant counterpoint—his performance exuding both reassurance and inevitability, mirroring the tension between regret and acceptance that Churchill so deftly explores.

Powerful staging

The staging at the Royal Exchange was suitably minimalistic, allowing the weight of Churchill’s words to take centre stage. Subtle lighting shifts and an understated yet evocative soundscape helped define the transitions between time, memory, and alternate realities without overshadowing the performances.

The intimate setting of the theatre only heightened the personal, almost confessional quality of the play.

For some, What If If Only may feel frustratingly brief—more an emotional impression than a fully realised drama—but that is Churchill’s intention. Like a fleeting thought or a half-remembered dream, the play lingers long after the final words are spoken, inviting audiences to meditate on the choices made and unmade in their own lives.

This Manchester staging is a worthy addition to the play’s lineage, a succinct but powerful theatrical experience that leaves its mark in the briefest of timespans. If you have the opportunity to see it, don’t hesitate.

Tickets for Escaped Alone and What If If Only at the Royal Exchange Theatre

Escaped Alone and What If If Only at the Royal Exchange Theatre from Fri 7th Feb – Sat 8th Mar 2025.

You can get tickets by clicking here