Here We Go
National Theatre
London SE1

CARYL CHURCHILL’S reputation guarantees her a main-stage production for almost anything she writes. 

Nevertheless many will be surprised that her new piece Here We Go appears in the National's repertoire, given the play’s brevity at only 40 minutes or so and its blatant daring in devoting almost half the running time to a scene where two actors perform in total silence. 

Short and seemingly slight the play may be and almost laughable in its lack of conventional story, character development or dramatic form – indeed some audience members tittered as it ended while others seemed affronted – but look again. 

The play rests on a massive theme, that of death. Delivered with piercing clarity by director Dominic Cooke, designer Vicki Mortimer, the ensemble cast and brilliantly unfolded by a playwright whose inventive use of dramatic form and device is legendary, the play forces us to relinquish our old assumptions and see a deeper truth. 

Watching it is more like gazing at a precious exhibit than following a conventional dramatic narrative. 

But that is its power.

In three segments, the play brings us the terrible enigma of death. It exposes the great human pretence that somehow we know and come to terms with it shows us that, where death is concerned, we have no objectivity, no processing mechanism and, ultimately, no words. 

Death is how we live. Living is the slow road to death and that is all there is. Sombre perhaps — but penetrating, uplifting and even funny at times. 

The first scene, snatches of conversation from a funeral group which are random, disjointed and meaningless, is interspersed with sudden and shocking personal descriptions of individual deaths. 

Set against looming white walls, broken by doorways that lead into impenetrable darkness, it leaves us deeply unsettled. 

In the following scene, a spotlit Patrick Godfrey, white-bearded like a classical Prometheus, becomes the newly dead man facing the unknowable. 

And in the final sequence, a carer repeatedly dresses and undresses a frail and pathetic old man until the final and inevitable dying of the light and silence. 

We, as audience, return to life but with a disturbingly changed perspective. 

There will be mixed views of this play and if you want comfortable watching it’s not for you. 

But if you want something brilliant, insightful, endlessly disturbing and brave, this is a must. 

Runs until December 19, box office: nationaltheatre.org.uk