Caryl Churchill

Betty, Clive’s wife, is played by a man because she wants to be what men want her to be, and, in the same way, Joshua, the black servant, is played by a white man because he wants to be what whites want him to be.

between colonial and sexual oppression, which Genet calls ‘the colonial or feminine mentality of interiorised repression’.

Come one and all for England

I am a father to the natives here,

And father to my family so dear.

My wife is all I dreamt a wife should be,

And everything she is she owes to me.

I am a man’s creation as you see,

And what men want is what I want to be

What white men want is what I want to be.

Well of course originally from home

done nothing at all compared to what you do.

Anyone at all to break the monotony.

CLIVE

But you have your mother. You have Ellen.

BETTY

Ellen is a governess. My mother is my mother