Rajha Shakiry Archives - thespyinthestalls.com

★★★★★

“brilliant, vital and fresh”

As an art form theatre is rarely truly frightening. Often a show will be disquieting, or sinister, but as King Troll began, I was confronted with the unusual sensation of fear. From the initial shock factor of flashing floodlights, the play unravels into something complex and disconcerting. It is thought provoking and moving and is horror at its best.

Two sisters, Nikita and Riya, are struggling to find enough documentation to ensure Riya’s resident status on ‘the island’. Nikita is the provider, the older sister and the expert on what is needed. She works for a refugee charity. Riya is the lost little sister. The ‘albatross’ around Nikita’s neck. In desperation they contact a reclusive friend of their mother’s, who gives them a magical gift which will change their lives – The ability to build a man, a man who will dote on them, or ‘a fawn’. But as with all magically made creatures, he is more than they could ever predict.

Sonali Bhattacharyya’s script is peculiar and beautifully written. The sisters are hilarious and their bond feels so real. The magic is delightfully sinister and the commentary on migrants’ rights is vital and potent. The idea of creating this white man, who will fawn on the sisters, is the perfect vehicle to demonstrate the injustice of the system. In one moment, The Fawn echoes everything that Nikita says, but he is believed where she was ignored. Marrying the abstract fear of the Home Office’s racist laws and the tangible fear of this Frankenstein’s Monster is a clever and unusual take.

Milli Bhatia’s direction shines in the moments of physicality. One particular moment of violence turns to tenderness in a cleverly crafted exploration of power. Each character is allowed light and shade and their own moment to be the star.

The cast are all phenomenal. Zainab Hasan and Safiyya Ingar carry the story as the two sisters. Both are angry and witty and strong pillars in a play which could feel disjointed. Diyar Bozkurt is heart-breaking as Tahir, Nikita’s undocumented friend, and his is the true heart of this play. However, the scene stealers are Ayesha Dharker and Dominic Holmes. Dharker bursts from the stage with comic and sinister oddness, both as the slick and casually cruel landlord and the wide-eyed recluse. Holmes’ eerie performance shines in his uncanny physicality as The Fawn, but he also deftly handles more naturalistic moments.

Rajha Shakiry’s set knits the different story strands together. Brutalist concrete columns connect barbed wire and piles of earth and sand, in the background of a cosy sitting room. The while tiled floor dirties with blood and mud, as these worlds collapse into one another.

XANA’s sound design complements the eerie atmosphere with voiceover and timely music. Elliot Griggs’ lighting is startling and disquieting, often flashing like a jarring floodlight, or providing the soft lamplight of the sisters’ flat.

This play will divide audiences, not down political lines but lines of weirdness. However, for many (myself included) it is brilliant, vital and fresh.

Autoreverse

Battersea Arts Centre

Reviewed – 5th February 2020

★★★★

“the raw emotions being experienced by Cordeu as she performs are something that we can tune into whoever and wherever we may be”

The importance of remembering – and forgetting – and identifying where you truly call your home are key themes in a fascinating and powerful audio-visual theatrical experience at Battersea Arts Centre as part of an impressive Going Global spring season.

As much a general plea to listen to the stories of our forebears as it is a personal journey through her family’s life in South America (and, indeed, the tale of the country itself), Florencia Cordeu has created a captivating piece of performance art in “Autoreverse.”

Using extracts from cassette tapes stored at her family home in Chile, Cordeu learns about the past and rediscovers her present as she reflects on what she hears on the tapes, featuring voices of various family members who escaped the cruel Argentinian regime in the 1970s but were forced apart as a result.

An array of cassette players in a living room are used to play the various tapes (all credit to Elena Pena at the sound desk for making this so realistic), which stirs recollections of growing up, and evokes memories of a bygone age, feelings of safety and home.

The set (Rajha Shakiry) is so convincing the audience feels it has mistakenly wandered into someone’s apartment rather than into a performance in the Centre’s Members’ Bar.

What is poignant is that to anyone else these recordings mean little – as Cordeu herself admits they “capture the banal, the everyday.” But we soon come to realise the importance of these tapes – love letters between family members living apart which capture moments in time to be played on other days in other places.

Director Omar Elerian allows the personal essence of the story to develop and flow naturally as Cordeu shares centre stage with the voices of the past, though references to the analogue reality of old cassette tapes (which have a limited life span) seem odd when it is clear that CDs or digitally recorded versions of the tapes are being played.

But it is easy to look beyond that as we picture a natural flow of thoughts and images falling onto the iron oxide of the tape, which allows a sense of “being there while not being there and seeing things with the ears.”

Not only do the recordings – and, by extension, the show – attempt to rescue and make sense of everyday life but serve a purpose of remembering what may have otherwise been forgotten.

A recurring motif of a tree – Cordeu brings on a bonsai, which she wishes could be planted outside rather than sitting on a table in a pot to allow it to grow freely and unconstrained – serves as a significant metaphor. She tends it with the notion that it is important to try to keep things alive, as important for plants as it is for memories.

With the first recording played serving as a narrative (the performer recorded it in her flat last year) there’s an intriguing question posed about looking to the future and being what you want to be – a publicity image for the production of a little girl dressed as Wonder Woman has relevance as the play continues.

The closing scene, which considers what is truly our home and how we build it up, adds depth to a show that is already thought-provoking.

The overall impact is touching, even where there’s a feeling another culture might find it difficult to share the experiences and fully understand the implication of all the memories. But the raw emotions being experienced by Cordeu as she performs are something that we can tune into whoever and wherever we may be.

KING TROLL (THE FAWN) at the New Diorama Theatre

★★★★★

“brilliant, vital and fresh”

KING TROLL (THE FAWN) at the New Diorama Theatre

Reviewed on 8th October 2024

by Auriol Reddaway

Photography by Helen Murray

Previously reviewed at this venue:

KING TROLL