I talk about Caryl Churchill being an outlier among playwrights, in that the older and more venerated she becomes, the shorter and more succinct her work gets. Does that mean going back to one of her first-ever plays will find her at her most rambling and unfocused? Well, yes as it turns out, but
Owners, which Stella Powell-Jones revives at Jermyn Street, also shows her not only commanding some great dialogue, but also occasions when she seems decades ahead of her time. Right from the comic opening scene in fact, where Clegg (Mark Huckett) closes the doors for the last time on the butcher's shop he inherited from his father and hoped to pass on to his son. But his wife can't have children, and is such a high-flying success that she'll be the one supporting both of them from now on.
