Jenny de Klerk

OR an hour and a half we are thrust into a city systemically being destroyed by shellfire, where ordinary people live in fear, and death and atrocity are everywhere.

It is the siege of Sarajevo, capital city of Bosnia Herzegovina, a bitter conflict that lasted almost four years, between 1992 and 1996, in which thousands died.

At the time we saw the pictures and the headlines, but atrocities so far away remain far away, until a play like this thrusts you into the front line.

It’s intense and moving, using dramatic symbolism as well as welldeveloped characters. This theatre and its management is known for giving space to new voices and up-and-coming actors and directors, and again and again this policy has paid off.

This is another venture that deserves to be supported.

At times, this play’s bloodsmeared, raw and gritty – it has to be. As with any “domestic” squabble (I use the word because to an outsider the similarities between these bitterly divided people – Bosnian, Serbs, even Croatians – is far more than their differences) there has to be an observer. Here it’s Peter, a naive photojournalist from South Africa, lost in Sarajevo as the siege escalates.

He pays tough, passionate Mirella to get him out and inevitably enters the swirling, opposing forces of Bosnia and Serbia as they fight for control in and out of the war-torn city.

Mirella is Bosnian, Alex is Serbian. They are not supposed to be together. At first, like all

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