Triumph, the latest short-form work by playwright Caryl Churchill, has debuted at London’s Almeida theatre. Spanning only 20 minutes, the production offers a sharp critique of contemporary political barbarism without explicitly naming figures such as Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin. Instead, the play utilizes historical parallels to examine the actions of powerful national leaders and the mechanisms they employ to maintain control. It skewers contemporary barbarism without mentioning the names of Trump, Putin or any of the other supposedly strong national leaders, running at just 20 minutes. One has only to look at recent events, lest anyone think that Churchill is overstating the case by linking Roman and contemporary decadence. That may be an oversimplified view of a complex artist but what I see in the later Churchill is a form of cosmic minimalism.
The narrative focuses on an uneasy romantic connection between a male journalist and a female press officer. This officer, who dons a blond wig for public appearances, serves as a staunch defender for a narcissistic, vindictive emperor. Initially, she promotes the regime’s perceived accomplishments, including imports of British pearls, gold from Gaul, and the construction of self-aggrandizing statues. However, through her partner, she discovers the true extent of the regime’s atrocities—such as prisoners being confined in cramped cages or physically mutilated—and eventually broadcasts these realities. Gold from the temples of Gaul, statues erected to his own glory, at first she merrily trumpets his more acceptable achievements: pearls imported from Britain. But through her lover she learns of the monstrosities of the regime she represents – such as prisoners trapped in claustrophobic cages and sawn in half – and reveals the truth on camera. Who has terrified the emperor by presenting him with a giant mullet, finds his face rubbed in it, at another point a fisherman. He then finds the emperor ensuring that his features are badly scarred by a giant crustacean: a slice of whimsical sadism from the reign of Tiberius, having foolishly thanked heaven that it wasn’t a crab. Inequities and injustices she found in British life, in the earlier period she was clearly animated by the absurdities.
Rather than facing punishment, she is met with unexpected acclaim as public interest surges. She is told, “The people like a strong emperor.” Kate O’Flynn delivers a performance as the spokesperson, standing at a lectern adorned in imperial purple and utilizing an American accent, effectively illustrating the transition from a human being to a media-managed caricature. The script draws heavily from Suetonius’s The Twelve Caesars, with instances such as the emperor threatening his wife with the declaration, “This beautiful throat will be cut whenever I please,” mirroring Caligula’s historical rhetoric. Standing at a lectern backed by imperial purple and speaking in an overtly American accent, Kate O’Flynn shows perfectly the way the authentic human being emerges from the glamorised robot who speaks for power: in James Macdonald’s production she even looks uncannily like the most recent and short-lived White House incumbent, Katie Zacharia. It is clear that a parallel is being drawn between then and now, since all the crimes perpetrated by the emperor are drawn from Suetonius’s The Twelve Caesars.
Churchill’s work highlights how modern Western governments attempt to obfuscate extreme violence through skilled media presentation. This reflection on current events includes references to the potential livestreaming of military executions, an idea previously supported by Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth, as well as incidents involving the lethal use of force against nonviolent protesters and fishermen on unsubstantiated grounds of drug smuggling. While fishermen in the Caribbean have been killed by American troops on the totally unproved grounds that they were drug smugglers, we have also seen ICE agents shooting nonviolent protesters. Although now abandoned, was originally endorsed by President Trump and his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, we live in a world where the idea of livestreaming a military execution. It began with the famous dinner-party scene in which five notable women from history were seen as both radical pioneers and social victims. It went on to explore the contradictions of the modern working woman.
Director James Macdonald describes Churchill as “always ahead of the game,” noting that she has increasingly moved toward a form of drama defined by its compression. This evolution stands in contrast to her earlier career in the 1970s and 80s, when she utilized more expansive structures to dissect societal failings. Her 1979 play Cloud 9, for instance, offered a humorous look at Victorian attitudes, where imperialist power was linked to sexual dominance through dialogue suggesting that women posed a threat to male virtues. Similarly, 1982’s Top Girls examined the limitations of the Thatcherite ethos, critiquing the idea that women could succeed by merely replicating male competitive ethics. In the 1970s and 80s she wrote a series of momentous plays that used a range of expansive devices to expose the defects of our society. While Churchill palpably applauds progress, she implies that the old class barriers have by no means disappeared, the second half transports us to the more libertarian sexual relationships of the 1970s but. It brilliantly nailed the Thatcherite ethos by suggesting that the replication by women of the male success ethic was pointless, appearing in 1982. I loved the play in 1987 but seeing it revived recently by a young company called Mad Spirit I felt that it belonged to its moment. But the visceral showdown came in the final scene where the striving Maggie Thatcher-worshipping Marlene confronted her working-class sister, Joyce. Joyce’s sense of deprivation led to a rancorous bitterness while the outwardly successful Marlene was conscious of the dubious bargain she had made in sacrificing her child to her career. This was one of the great plays of the century, as Lesley Manville pointed out when introducing a reshowing of the play on BBC Four.
Churchill’s later experimental style, which became increasingly condensed, was evident in the 2000 premiere of Far Away, a reflection on localized fascism, and the 2002 play A Number, which explored themes of human cloning and existential risk in a 60-minute timeframe. Her 2016 production Escaped Alone further demonstrated this compressionism, featuring a group of women in a garden whose lighthearted conversation was punctured by a vision of global catastrophe involving floods, fires, and the redirection of resources to media consumption. Latterly she has created a number of works in which formal brevity is accompanied by a bleak worldview.
Ultimately, Churchill remains a writer characterized by her ability to balance everyday observations with deep-seated concerns about the future. Her work continues to investigate the tension between personal comfort and the broader systemic threats posed by authoritarianism and technological shifts.
