This is a play that everyone needs to see. The script should be sent to every school. It needs to tour the UK. The interviews that make up the heart of this play, interviews the creators smuggled themselves into Syria to collect, bring with them a devastating truth: these characters are real, these stories are true.
Through Lafferty’s directorial skill, we are presented with twelve characters, their narrative arc taking the form of overlapping monologues. Though moments of interaction are few, the smooth speech transitions between characters and fast-paced delivery create a strong sense of unity between the characters, satisfying the need for dialogue and mirroring the collectiveness of a people’s revolution.
The intimacy of the Finborough, a black box studio seating fifty people is perfect for this play; the cramped space erasing any sense of spectacle and allowing a daunting global issue to be boiled down to an individual level. The actors are nose-to-nose with the audience; stares unyielding and accusatory, then colloquial and engaging, and the script takes advantage of this closeness, from the opening “Welcome! Welcome! Hello!...You speak English?”, to the haunting final scene.
As the audience enter, TV screens mounted on the walls display tourism footage of Syria- colourful and idyllic - juxtaposed with white noise and crackling signal. In combination with the partially destroyed set and blood-stained posters of Bashar al-Assad, this creates the effect of a country being destroyed by violence. The set, lighting, sound, and visuals manipulate the audience from states of high tension to relief and back again; no-one is merely an observer- this is all very real.
Unfortunately, there were moments where I felt the acting didn’t quite reach the potential of the script, and line slips were too frequent for a sixth performance. There were, however, some stand-out performances including Nicholas Karimi’s Omar and David Broughton-Davies’ Peter. This character acted as a bridge between the audience and the Syrian revolution. Often employed as comic relief to break the tension, Peter was the character to whom the audience most easily related and trusted, making his later observations on the nature of war, the media, and the revolution just as poignant as the torture scenes.
The representation of Syrian characters with English actors, whether out of necessity or artistic choice, works well. This play brings a conflict thousands of miles away worryingly close to home. Casting actors from the UK makes the characters startlingly relatable and reminds us of the universality of war and of revolution.
This play functions to communicate, not to entertain. Thus, any aspects of the production that are not, perhaps, as polished as they could be are rendered irrelevant by the importance of the message. The Fear of Breathing is a direct plea to the west; it challenges every audience member as an individual to step up.
