It always seemed like the odds were against Caryl Churchill – Britain’s greatest living playwright – ever retiring in a meaningful sense. And thus it proves as the 88-year-old does what she’s done many times before and abruptly drops a 15-minute long play at almost no notice, having long since disregarded the conventional commisioniong process. Reuiniting with her lonbg-term director James McDonald, Triumph looks to be one of her more overtly political works and would appear to concern a press secretary who falls for a reporter.
We know very little beyond that but it’s Caryl Churchill: you’d be mad to miss it, and don’t let the brief running time make you think it won’t be a deeply satisfying, linguistically head-spinning work of theatre.
The icing on the cake is a superb cast comprising Matthew Beard and Kate O’Flynn, in her first stage perfomance since she found Emmy-winning screen fame in Widow’s Bay.
Presumably Triumph has gone to the Almeida because Churchill is good friends – and reguar collaborators – with Dominic Cooke, the theatre’s new boss. It would be nice to think there’s more where it came from.