Hagar is a dreamer.
An achingly emotional tour-de-force
But she never dreamed she’d be a refugee.
Set in Aleppo in 2015, this haunting tale of love and hope against the odds sees Hagar try everything she can to bring her baby son to the relative haven of European safety. But she hasn’t reckoned on the ever-changing demands of the people smugglers or the terrible conditionality of friendly help.
As the piece opens, we see Hagar (Amena Shehab) playing with the poor remnants of her world as she tries to conjure a first birthday treat for her baby: a plastic tea set, a tiny cupcake with a solitary candle, crates as tables, sand bags as guests. The humour at the outset is delicate and whimsical, allowing an audience to fully connect with the littlenesses of life we all splash about it; drawing us into Hagar’s warmth and humanity; urging her little boy to grow into the man she so wishes for him to become.
The inevitable horror is slowly layered throughout the piece, cleverly avoiding sensationalism or sentimentality. This almost matter-of-factness about a world collapsing around her adds to the bleakness and inevitability permeating and threatening to undermine every glimpse of hope. When it does come, it does so in wave upon dreadful wave, threatening to engulf the audience in impotent fury as surely as the cruel sea threatens the lives of those desperate to forge a new life.
Herself a two-time refugee, Shehab embodies Hagar with a weary pride and purpose which barely falters throughout this achingly emotional tour-de-force. Through a collage of interactions, we see her chances for happiness rise and fall: as fluctuant as the dunes raked into the desert sand.
Playwright Aksam Alyousef has created a beautifully restrained piece that, although nominally set in Syria, chimes all too horribly with thousands of displaced and disenfranchised peoples across the world.
But it should never have needed to be written. And this: this is precisely why we all do what we do.
To engage, to educate, to entertain.
But above all: to make a difference. To tell the stories that no-one else will.
There is a reason that totalitarian regimes ban theatre. A reason that it suits a certain type of person to turn their backs on those in need. Religion may have once been the opium of the masses; but ignorance is making a strong claim as its twenty-first century replacement.
Thus, shows like this are so powerful because they are not only dramatically exquisite, but politically expedient. And it is our duty - and bittersweet joy - to ensure that such works can continue to change the world: one audience at a time.
