Denied

The mood when the audience enters this bleak and dimly-lit space is sombre. A single Muslim girl kneels chanting, obviously scared. This is Sana (played by the writer and director, Jodi De Souza), and she is in fear of her husband, with good reason, as we shall find out. The action then switches to Britain, and another young girl, white, middle-class Francesca (Jennifer Bryden) with very different problems. What unfolds over the next hour and a half is a cleverly constructed tale in which these two people’s lives become entwined in our present and then into the future.

The issues explored in De Souza’s play are important, especially the extent of the horror of honour killings – 5000 last year, 12 of them in the UK. Her script makes a good case both for why people become anti-Muslim and why they become anti-West and ultimately turn to suicide bombing. However this show is an hour and a half with barely a single laugh – it’s not a crime to have good gags in a serious drama, in fact it’s probably a very good idea. This is a play and a production which takes itself very seriously indeed.

This might be okay if the performers could carry it off. Most of the acting is pretty truthful, especially Bryden and Emma Vane playing the middle-aged Francesca, but there’s no point if we can’t hear half of it. This is a very difficult space, with audience on three sides and almost completely surrounded by drapes which totally deaden the sound. Perhaps the actors should project more, but I’m not sure they have the technique. The entrances and exits are messy and undynamic (again the space doesn’t help here). Some of the action is also relayed by projection onto one of the walls. Perversely the images are displayed above the heads of one side of the audience, so they couldn’t see them, and were also totally unviewable from some of the seats on the sides, including mine. This show has two directors, so really none of this should be happening.

The three star rating is as much for the endeavour and importance of work like this as anything else. It’s a real shame that the product isn’t matched by the craft. It’s also an irony given the title that we were denied the chance to show our appreciation in the usual way as we are ushered out aggressively by cast and crew as ‘part of the action”. For the record, one or two of the more elderly people found this confusing and frightening and I have to report most of the rest were just pissed off once they got outside (Punter A: Are we supposed to go back in? Punter B: I bloody hope not!)

Applause and the curtain call aren’t quaint traditions, they are an unspoken contract between performer and watcher, an acknowledgment that they have taken part in something unique together (it’s what makes live performance so much more exciting that film or TV) and that no matter how moving it was or how important the issues are it was, after all, only pretend. I saw a bunch of kids perform The Lord Of The Flies this week, which as a piece of writing arguably deals with the same issues – man’s capacity for unimaginable cruelty. It was stunningly moving at the end, most of the audience audibly sobbing, but then the lights came up, the kids bowed and smiled, and ran off to a recording of The Boys Are Back Town. Brilliant, unpretentious, and in no way an obstacle to understanding the play or thinking profoundly about it’s issues long after it was over.