Far Away
by Johanna Droubay
Willamette Week, Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Elaborate visual effects and unnatural performances distract from the meaning of Caryl Churchill’s one-hour play about war, gore and hat-making. Though Churchill’s writing is meant to be challenging and ambiguous, Liminal’s staging of Far Away would lead one to believe she is an absurdist without plot or point. In fact, Far Away has several easily comprehensible threads and plot points: In Act I, young Joan (the precociously talented Hallie Blashfield) seeks an explanation for her uncle’s violent behavior; in Act II, grown-up Joan (Madeleine Sanford) makes a competitve sport of crafting hats to humiliate prisoners on death row; and finally, in Act III, a war erupts in which animals and rivers take sides. Liminal’s production, however, obscures everything with messy, screensaverlike video projections, unnatural inflections and heavily stylized movement. Worse still, disturbing video images early in Act I preclude any kind of gradual progression from eerie to horrible.
Current News
Features
Resurrectory preview
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Ad for the Artbeat segment on Liminal
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Letters to the Editor
Willamette Week, Nov. 11 & 18, 1998
Reviews
The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other
The Oregonian April 13, 2000
Articles by Liminal members
Past news releases
Liminal stages Caryl Churchill’s play Far Away
December 16, 2005
Liminal’s Resurrectory Re-Commits, Investigates 100-Year-Old Murders
March 28, 2005
High-resolution photos of The Resurrectory
Bikes, Bands and Bacchanalia Oct. 21, 2003
Faust(Faust) August 13, 2003
Krapp’s Last Tape June 28, 2003
Three Plays, Five Lives April 1, 2003
FluXconcert PDX March 17, 2003
Minimal at Liminal February 4, 2003
The Seven Deadly Sins August 7, 2002
Objects for the Emancipated Consumer (in Vancouver, B.C.) Oct. 4, 2001
Objects for the Emancipated Consumer (in Portland) April 4, 2001
Objects for the Emancipated Consumer (in Seattle) Jan. 22, 2001
Thomas Leabhart workshop Dec. 3, 1999
Jowl Movements I-IX (3) Oct. 28, 1998
Jowl Movements I-IX (1) Oct. 8, 1998
Handke Salmagundi March 16, 1998
Symposium on the Avant-Garde in Portland March 16, 1998
Suicide in B-flat July 1997
