The Skriker

When you’re a big talent like Caryl Churchill, the greatest danger lies in overplaying your hand—and that’s something she does here, especially in the eternity of this play’s opening moments, five minutes of expositional confusion. Of course, performance poetry has largely ruined the kind of Joycean wordplay she employs; it’s impossible not to hear that subgenre’s cadence of somewhat-clever, class-conscious expression in the titular faerie’s stream-of-consciousness inaugural monologue. But even on its own merits, Churchill’s typically challenging narrative doesn’t begin to take shape until about a half hour in, long after any audience members in their right minds would’ve stopped caring about what all the laughter-shrouded moaning might mean.

In broad outlines Churchill charts the tale of the Skriker (Wilson), a malevolent Celtic-style spirit menacing a couple of young women, perhaps in revenge for society’s vague environmental diss. There’s a genuinely creepy changeling motif on hand and some significant notes concerning the horror of fertility, but otherwise it’s all nonsense, a lot of movement and maskery in search of a purpose. Thankfully GreyZelda’s production is excellent, though Daniels as Josie should be crazier, and Wilson wastes some opportunities to humanize her inhuman role. That note notwithstanding, Wilson is still a small marvel in her embodiment of the shape-shifting villainess, delivering the goods in numerous incarnations.