Tag Archives: Naomi Wallace

The Breach

The Breach

★★★

Hampstead Theatre

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The Breach

Hampstead Theatre

Reviewed – 12th May 2022

★★★

 

“The performances are uniformly magnificent: honest and brutal. Yet it stops just short of drawing us in emotionally”

 

Towards the end of Naomi Wallace’s “The Breach”, the joint protagonist, Jude, is imagining a version of the past that didn’t happen, but could have. It takes a while to get there but the scene encapsulates both the power and impotence of hindsight. The characters wrestle with regret, bereavement and guilt, but more so with the question of whether that could have been avoided had they acted differently.

The play jumps between 1977 and 1991, initially as two very different worlds but gradually they overlap and the two separate decades bear witness to each other. Set against a completely bare stage there is little to differentiate the two ages. Different actors play the younger and older versions of the characters. Between the scenes a stark line of white light sweeps the stage, brushing them away like skittles to replace them with their counterparts.

We begin in the seventies, in small town America, a time of restlessness, turbulence, political scandal and a questioning of traditional authority (there are extensive, weighty articles in the programme notes depicting the profound effects on the American youth of the Vietnam War and ‘Neoliberalism’ – although not touched upon at all in the script). Seventeen-year-old Jude (Shannon Tarbet) has taken it upon herself to protect her younger brother Acton (Stanley Morgan). They spend their days in the basement of their modest home creating their own world. Frayne (Charlie Beck) and Hoke (Alfie Jones) gate-crash this world – not so much friends of Acton but emotional racketeers. Conditions are laid and sacrifices must be made. Inevitably the bond between brother and sister is snapped in two. In hindsight, the love they shared that could have prevented this is the exact same love that caused it.

So, you cannot escape the actions of the past then. But can you learn from them? Tellingly there is no casting for the older Acton, but Jude (Jasmine Blackborow), Frayne (Douggie McMeekin) and Hoke (Tom Lewis) reconvene fourteen years later. As each snapshot of 1991 plays out onstage, more is revealed of the dangerous games the teenagers played, focusing on many issues – most notably sexual consent. A lot is said today about how it was a ‘different time’, back then. But accountability (rightly or wrongly) has no limits. As these thirty-somethings examine their past, one wonders who the victims and who the culprits are. And are the intervening years of guilt and atonement enough or should further punishment be executed? This play, while never giving us a succinct answer, suggests we punish ourselves enough. There are no winners.

Sarah Frankcom’s sharp and efficient direction matches Wallace’s writing which is as penetrative as ever. The performances are uniformly magnificent: honest and brutal. Yet it stops just short of drawing us in emotionally. We don’t quite see the fragility, fear and loneliness that lies beneath the rough exterior. Which is a shame, and a surprise. Based partially on past experience, it seems that Wallace has poured a lot of her own heart into the writing; but ultimately it appeals more to the intellect than to our hearts.

 

 

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Johan Persson

 


The Breach

Hampstead Theatre until 4th June

 

Recently reviewed at this venue:
Night Mother | ★★★★ | October 2021
The Forest | ★★★ | February 2022
The Fever Syndrome | ★★★ | April 2022

 

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Returning to Haifa – 4 Stars

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Haifa

Returning to Haifa

Finborough Theatre

Reviewed – 1st March 2018

★★★★

“this is at heart a very human story that unleashes powerful emotions”

 

You know you have witnessed something special at the theatre when there is an almost imperceptible beat, right at the end, just before the audience applauds. That split second speaks volumes.

“Returning to Haifa” is a compelling story of two families, one Palestinian, one Israeli, forced into an intimacy they did not choose. In 1948, Said and Safiyya fled their home during the Palestinian exodus. A series of laws passed by the Israeli government prevented them from returning until nearly twenty years later when the borders are open again. Returning to their home in Haifa in 1967 the couple are prepared to find someone else living in their former home. What they are not prepared for is the reconciliation with their son who they were forced to abandon, in the chaos and violence of their escape, when he was five months old. Now twenty years old he has been raised as an Israeli Jew – in short, his parents’ enemy.

Adapted for the stage by Naomi Wallace and Ismail Khalidi from Ghassan Kanafani’s novella, this production is an electrifying eighty minutes of theatre. The background against which it is set may steer the story into a form of agitprop, which for some might be off-putting. However, this is at heart a very human story that unleashes powerful emotions. Following the couple’s return, with flashbacks into their past, the narrative is fluid and the interconnection between past and present expertly conveyed. Myriam Acharki as Safiyya and Ammar Haj Ahmad as Said embrace the characters’ prospect at returning home with genuine trepidation. In parallel, Leila Ayad and Ethan Kai play their younger selves. The effect is haunting. The actors have nowhere to hide in the Finborough’s intimate space, and each shift of emotion is precisely conveyed in the performances.

The end result is thought provoking, disturbing and memorable. The beauty of the writing lies in the amalgam of the political and the personal; the connection between individual and global struggles. This is brought to the fore when the couple finally meet their son. Acharki gives a spellbinding portrayal of the birth mother meeting the adoptive mother, with echoes of the ‘Judgement of Solomon’. Marlene Sidaway plays Miriam, the Jewish woman who raised the boy having lost her own son to the Holocaust, with a perfectly judged empathy while Ethan Kai who doubles as Dov, the grown up son, is heart wrenching in his rejection of his natural parents.

You don’t need to be au fait with the conflict, historical or current, to appreciate this play, yet it does give you a better understanding of the situation than the countless column inches and broadsheet analysis do. This is theatre as it should be. Theatre that is raw, that challenges the way we think about the world. As Naomi Wallace has said: “Even if you disagree with the voices, they still deserve to be heard”. Kanafani was silenced when he was assassinated at the age of thirty-six, but this adaptation helps his legacy to live on. Originally commissioned in New York but subsequently abandoned after political pressure, it is no surprise at all that this premiere at the Finborough is selling out fast.

 

Reviewed by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Scott Rylander

 


Returning to Haifa

Finborough Theatre until 24th March

 

 

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