Patalog

Now an octogenarian, and with more than thirty plays to her name, Caryl Churchill must be the English-speaking theatre’s nearest equivalent to a rock star of a certain age. It’s no exaggeration to say that without her plays – which, like Samuel Beckett’s, have become increasingly spare and crystalline over time, some running to as little as ten minutes – it would be hard to imagine the existence of whole generations of British playwrights, from Martin Crimp and Mark Ravenhill, to Alistair McDowell and Lucy Kirkwood.