FAR AWAY
Ambika P3
★★★★
“This play has reached a high point through imaginative design and dramatic setting”
I am a sucker for promenade and immersive theatre (especially one in which the audience is used only as an observer) and this was a real goody. But Far Away is a dystopian drama, so if you are looking for an uplifting evening this will not be for you. It explores dark themes, some of which seem dangerously real.
The descent into hell begins as you enter the ‘theatre’. And already the genius of Rebecca McCutcheon’s production is manifesting. You are received into Ambika 3 through wire barriers guarded by funerary-style ushers, and sent down a long track into the dismal concrete underworld of the University of Westminster building. Below ground you wait, disorientated and huddled with strangers for the ‘curtain’ – rolling steel doors – to go up and you are allowed into the cavernous performance space of a subterranean warehouse.
Caryl Churchill’s play, first produced in 2000 at the Royal Court, explores fear and citizen control, using absurdist scenes. It has had a mixed reception in previous iterations, some calling it ‘a small, oblique masterwork’ (Charles Isherwood), others criticising it for being muddled and lacking in resolution. Here, McCutcheon and her talented production team have married place, play, performance and promenade to extraordinary effect, one which fully explores the play’s foreboding atmosphere and sinister twists. It wasn’t long before I got the sense that I was part of the creation, even though this was billed as a non participatory experience. Sound (Lucy Ann Harrison) and lighting (Jack Hathaway) guide the audience in wandering between the dark corridors and low-lit scenes. Somehow we are also involved too. In Act Two, between scenes, the spotlights on the hatters’ tables are switched off, leaving the audience as silhouettes on the backdrop, with the hats. Are we the people that Joan and Todd are making these hats for? Are we being led to our doom?
The play pivots between three acts – and three primary settings. There is a timeline and character development but no actual explanations of how we got from one act to the next. Joan, the main character (played by Lorna Dale), is a young girl who sees a horrifying event but is gaslighted by her aunt Harper (Lizzie Hopley) when she tries to talk about it. In the next act, 15 years later, she is working with a colleague Todd (Samuel Gosrani) at an apparently creative and satisfying job as a milliner. They may be falling in love. An equally horrifying revelation, turns this scene on its head. The third and final act quickly whisks away any sense that there is going to be a happy ending, or even any ending. War and horror are fully present but, just as sinister, is the uncertainty of anything, even whose side nature is on.
There are strong performances by the actors – Dale perfectly displays bewilderment and vulnerability, with a final soliloquy that is powerfully delivered, Gosrani is magnetic in his turning between cynicism and concern, Hopley gives a subtle performance in the first act as she avoids answering Joan’s questions.
This play has reached a high point through imaginative design and dramatic setting. McCutcheon and the Lost Text/Found Space theatre group that she founded is acclaimed for site specific production and has lifted Far Away to another level. I was left with one reflection: 25 years after Churchill wrote her play, has the absurdism used then, now become a reality of our time?
FAR AWAY
Ambika P3, University of Westminster as part of Camden Fringe Festival 2025
Reviewed on 6th August 2025
by Louise Sibley
Photography by Ellie Kurttz
Previously reviewed at this venue:
PEAKY BLINDERS: RAMBERT’S THE REDEMPTION OF THOMAS SHELBY | ★★★★★ | SADLER’S WELLS THEATRE | August 2025
THREE CHICKENS CONFRONT EXISTENCE | ★★★★★ | EDINBURGH FESTIVAL FRINGE | August 2025
SOME MASTERCHEF SH*T | ★★★★★ | EDINBURGH FESTIVAL FRINGE | August 2025
THE DIANA MIXTAPE | ★★★★★ | HERE AT OUTERNET | July 2025
EXTRAORDINARY WOMEN | ★★★★★ | JERMYN STREET THEATRE | July 2025
SINBAD THE SAILOR | ★★★★★ | LILIAN BAYLIS STUDIO | July 2025
THAT BASTARD, PUCCINI! | ★★★★★ | PARK THEATRE | July 2025
JUSTIN VIVIAN BOND: SEX WITH STRANGERS | ★★★★★ | SOHO THEATRE WALTHAMSTOW | July 2025
R.O.S.E. | ★★★★★ | SADLER’S WELLS EAST | July 2025
JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR | ★★★★★ | WATERMILL THEATRE NEWBURY | July 2025
