Deirdre O’Connell as Dot keeps an imp in a corked old wine bottle, expecting it to work magic – to  grant Dot’s wishes, as long as what she asks for is not too selfish. It’s true the imp has not granted any wishes so far. It’s also invisible. And Jimmy  (John Ellison Conlee), the irascible old cousin who lives with Dot, says it’s just an empty wine bottle and there is no such thing as an imp. But Dot has faith.

 “Imp”  is the last and by far the longest of the four elusive plays by Caryl Churchill that have opened tonight on a single program at the Public Theater. I suspect that those theatergoers who consider the 86-year-old Churchill to be the greatest living playwright of the English language (and there are many) will act like Dot – faithfully looking for the magic that they have come to expect from the author of such inventive works as (to cite two that were presented in New York over the past decade)  “Cloud Nine” and “Love and Information.”

Director James McDonald presumably packaged these quartet of plays together because we’re meant to see a connection among them. When he staged three of these same plays together in 2019 at the Royal Court Theatre (along with a fourth that has now been replaced),  they were seen as tied together by issues of faith, or the human need for myths, or the curse of violence, or the uses and abuses of storytelling.

There is evidence for each of these interpretations. But any interpretation requires a leap, since what unfolds in each play is mostly opaque. What these plays most clearly have in common is a seductive use of language and a devastating mix of tones – whimsical, even outright amusing…and then brutal.

“Glass” initially reminded me of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast, with a glass girl (Ayana Workman) on a mantelpiece alongside other bric-a-brac that argue about their relative worth: a clock, (“You’re beautiful, but I’m  also useful.”) a red toy dog (“I know I’m plastic but I’m a memory of a happy holiday”), a modest vase (“Let’s be quiet but enjoy being beautiful.”) But the play takes an un-Disney turn into child sexual abuse and suicide. 

This is less shocking than it sounds, because there is a distancing quality to both the writing and the staging. Everything is rendered abstract — none of the mantelpiece pieces are costumed to look like their characters, and scenic designer Miriam Buether’s mantelpiece is just a solid white beam in mid-air.

In “Kill,” Deirdre O’Connell sits on a cloud representing all gods, spouting a furious monologue that may sound indistinguishable from the ravings of the deranged on the A train, except that it’s a meticulous amalgam of the gory plotlines from Greek mythology, punctuated by some striking commentary (“They sacrifice the children quite easily when there’s a war to be won.”) The unmistakeable point: We have created the gods in our image, to excuse our inexcusably vile and violent impulses.

I saw “What If If Only” in 2021, when it was newly written, and staged as digital theater during the pandemic, and seemed to be a contemplation of grief and loss. The staging here expands and (literally) illuminates its meaning.  It begins with what seems to be idle thoughts by a lone figure (Sathya Sridharan) in a box with all-white walls. “I was reading about this man who spent 10 years trying to paint an apple so it looked just like an apple. Then he spent seven years trying to paint an apple so it looked nothing like an apple. Then he died.” He wonders what kind of apple, and if he had lived would he have started in on an orange, and then asks how hard could it be to paint something that looks nothing like an apple. 

These are funny thoughts. But he is apparently saying them to a character who is himself dead (Conlee), Then the walls of the box lift, the entire cast (some dozen performers) crowd onto the stage, and the play now seems not just about the loss of a loved one, but the loss of the infinite possibilities of the future (albeit perhaps still expressed by a character in mourning.). “The Present always has wars and any Future that promised no more is dead dead dead. But there’s nice things too for those who have them, movies and trees and people who love each other.”

“Imp,” which takes up as much time as the other three combined, and unfolds after an intermission, is the most conventional-seeming of the four plays. It takes place entirely in the middle class home of Dot and Jimmy, who sit in chairs as they interact with a distant relative named Niamh (Adelind Horan), who’s moved from Ireland after being orphaned, and Rob (Japhet Balaban) a homeless man to whom they politely offer some tea, and who gets into a relationship with Niamh. What I just described is not inaccurate, and there is even something of a plot involving the four.  But it doesn’t get at all that’s going on. There’s that imp (which doesn’t make its appearance – or non-appearance – until halfway through the play.) There’s the rambling, random conversations, full of non-sequiturs, which wouldn’t be out of place in the theater of the absurd, but also feel true-to-life; real people do speak that way. There’s Jimmy constantly recalling stories of terrible things happening to neighbors, which (if you’re attentive) you eventually realize are each the plots of Shakespearean or Greek tragedies – Othello, Hamlet, King Lear, Oedipus Rex. There’s the casual revelation that Dot, so well-meaning, so optimistic, spent time in jail because as a nurse she beat up a  patient whose helplessness frustrated her.

“Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp” is being given a production that’s watchable enough – Deirdre O’Connell is the undeniable standout, but the entire cast is game, including a couple of circus acts in-between the plays (acrobat Junru Wang and juggler Maddox Morfit-Tighe) – so that you may be OK with not being able to grasp what it all means. Until you get home, and the plays continue in your head.

Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp
Public Theater through May 11
Running time: 2 hours and 15 minutes including one intermission.
Tickets: $79
Written by Caryl Churchill
Directed by James Macdonald
Scenic design by Miriam Buether, costume design by Enver Chakartash, lighting design by Isabella Byrd, sound design by Bray Poor, stunt coordination by Michael Rossmy, and dialect coaching by Amanda Quaid.
Cast: Japhet Balaban,Ruby Blaut,John Ellison Conlee,Adelind Horan,Maddox Morfit-Tighe,Deirdre O’Connell, Cecelia Ann Popp, Sathya Sridharan,Junru Wang,and Ayana Workman.