Bad Days and Odd Nights, Greenwich Theatre review ★★★★★

Greenwich Theatre has reopened with a quadruple bill of playwright Caryl Churchill’s rarely staged works, directed by James Haddrell. Brought together under the umbrella title Bad Days and Odd Nights, the four-part performance kicks off with a rarely staged revival of one-act play Seagulls (1978), a dense three-hander about a woman with the magical ability to move objects and an exploitative manager keen to milk her subject's rare ability for all it’s worth. It's a little slow, but what's unsaid cleverly keeps us guessing until the end.

Second, and perhaps the highlight of the night, is Three More Sleepless Nights (1980), about three couples whose relationships are in varying degrees of trouble. Cleo Pettitt’s set design – a bed strewn with alternating covers – moves the action seamlessly between the homes, while authentic, soul-searching performances from Paul McGann (of Withnail and I, and Luther fame), Gracy Goldman, Verna Vyas and Dan Gaisford enthrall us in the disappointments and gradual estrangements of domestic life.

Following an interval (itself a rarity in 2021), the attention turns to Churchill’s short play Abortive (1971) – first broadcast 50 years ago on BBC Radio 3 – with McGann and Kerrie Taylor (Hollyoaks) stepping masterfully into the traumatised yet sinister shoes of Colin and Roz. The pair portray a couple struggling to rekindle intimacy after an event leads them to abort the baby Roz is carrying. The play is an early example of Churchill’s now signature talent for alluding to something dark and unsettling while leaving the finer, grizzly details to the viewer’s interpretation, and it’s thrilling to see the story live on stage.

Verna Vyas, Bad Days and Odd Nights, Greenwich Theatre. Photo: Lidia Crisafulli

Last but most urgent is a prescient adaptation of Churchill’s 1971 radio drama Not Not Not Not Not Enough Oxygen, set in a world in which the air pollution is so bad, many living in ‘the Londons’ are forced to endure a life confined inside their homes. With the real-world climate crisis raging on, the 70s styling of production seems amiss, but the dangers facing those holed up indoors is captured powerfully with fumes curling through the open windows and in the exhausted, frustrated performances by Bonnie Baddoo, Gaisford and Vyas.

A life-size, rusty segment of a rollercoaster looms over the action from the back of the stage – fittingly so, for a production that takes its audience on a journey through four of the playwright’s earliest works.

Do the four plays flow well together? Oh yes. Haddrell – who describes Churchill’s work as ‘endlessly rewarding’ and in March, staged an online production of her 1978 televised play The After-Dinner Joke – has successfully married up stories that lure us into the bosom of codependent relationships from where we can peer out on bigger political and societal issues at play.