๐ท The Rat Slips on Shards of Glassโฆ
Welcome back to The Stage Ratโyour theatre-obsessed rodent scuttling through the cracks of New Yorkโs stages, where the strange stuff grows.
This week, I scurried into a broken fairy tale. At The Public, Caryl Churchillโs Glass. Kill. WHAT IF IF ONLY. Imp. plays like theatre in a dreamโfractured, unsettling, and a little bit wicked.
A girl made of glass. Gods and murders. Ghosts. A secret in a bottle.
These four short plays, staged together for the first time by James Macdonald, are core Churchill: elliptical, eerie, and full of bite. She doesnโt give answersโshe gives you something to nibble on in the dark.
Sadly not cheese โน
THE RATโS RECOMMENDATION:
โGLASS. KILL. WHAT IF IF ONLY. IMP.โ
Cheese Score: ๐ง๐ง๐ง (3/5)
Description: A haunting collage of fractured fables, Glass. Kill. WHAT IF IF ONLY. Imp. is Caryl Churchillโs eerie meditation on innocence, violence, and the strange creatures lurking just beneath the surface of everyday life.
Why You Should Care:
Poetic, Strange, Vulnerable. Churchill isnโt here to comfort you. Her writing is provocative, fragmented, and often pitch black. A girl made of glass, gods who kill, ghosts who linger, an imp maybeโitโs myth and metaphor colliding in slow motion. The plays lurch toward abstraction and bring you along too.
Floating Design. The suspended set pieces are magicalโbeds hovering, furniture dangling in the voidโcreate a world thatโs literally and emotionally unstable. Scenes melt, logic bends, and youโre left drifting between stories.
Then Suddenly, Theyโre in the Air. Surprise acrobatic interludes break the plays upโgiving an unexpected carnival/ circus theme. Mysterious.
And Itโs Four Plays, Not Just One. In a single evening, you get a kaleidoscope of themes, tones, and texturesโeach short play bending time and meaning in its own way, with actors shifting roles across wildly different worlds.
Where - The Public
How long is this? - 2 hour 15 mins including intermission.
Who to Bring โ Your friend who once wrote a ten-page paper on Beckett and hasnโt stopped referencing it since. The director who stages Hamlet in a bathtub and calls it โsite-specific.โ That one dramaturg who insists youโre not supposed to understand it. Someone who thinks Black Mirror is high art, and someone else whoโs haunted by their childhood fairy tales.
Overall Cheese rating: 3/5
Tickets: To get free tickets to GLASS. KILL. WHAT IF IF ONLY. IMP. ๐ enter this weekโs ticket lottery below.
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Until next week, keep it dramatic, keep it ratty, and always aim for center stage! ๐โจ.
P.S. Thanks for being part of this weird rat family. Please reply to this email and let us rats know how we are doing?
With lots of Ratitude,
The Stage Rat