Banned actors telling tales from behind prison walls
EUROPE’S ONLY banned theatre company — Belarus Free Theatre — have turned their focus to Russia, where Maria Alyokhina of the dissident protest band Pussy Riot was imprisoned. In something of a coup, Alyokhina herself joins BFT on stage here to relate the brutal psychological and physical mistreatment endured by her in Russian prisons. Strip searches — some while the prisoner is suspended from ropes — are apparently a favourite of the system.
The case of extreme political artist Petr Pavlensky — the man who nailed his scrotum to Red Square and who later set fire to the front door of Rus- sia’s secret service HQ in Moscow — is also represented, as is that of Ukrainian film-maker Oleg Stensov who has been jailed by a Russian court for 20 years on allegedly trumped-up charges of terrorism.
These three dissidents form the backbone of this pummeling, uninterrupted show. Each case is considered with heavy irony by a couple of suited Putin fixers.
Which artist should be released, and which incarcerated is a decision made in one scene while the duo sit opposite each Burning Doors other on loos. East European satire can come across as awfully heavy-handed in the west. But the cast evoke the brutality of the regimes they oppose by putting themselves through all manner of real and daunting physical hardship. Some of the punches may be pulled, but they still leave their mark on the bodies of the recipients. State oppression is evoked by this physical theatre group’s willingness to oppress themselves. It is hard to watch at times. But inescapable is the unshakeable, liferisking bravery of these artists — not only the ones whose cases are represented here, but the performers, too.
HOW TO write a rom-com that isn’t brimful of cliché? Samantha Ellis goes about adding to this most enduring of genres by subverting every assumption implied by the title of her comedy. The feminist here is not a woman, but a baker called Steve who is the son of a former Greenham Common CND protestor. It is Jewish journalist Kate who is the more reactionary of the couple, her romantic type being more alpha-male Heathcliff than the constantly considerate beta-male Steve.
This premise alone would be a strong enough to pitch to a film studio, and perhaps one day it will. But with two actors playing a multiplicity of characters including Steve’s Scottish mum, and Kate’s Israeli dad; Kate’s predatory boss and Steve’s former girlfriend, any film version will have to unpick the pleasingly inherent theatricality of Ellis’s writing and Matthew Lloyd’s production.
Costumes fly during the quick changes which Sarah Daykin executed with a couple of knowing looks to the audience. Both Daykin and the excellent Tom Berish could have more fun with this.
Just occasionally, the evening leans a little too much on rom-com tropes: the ketchup spotted by Steve on Kate’s cheek during their first date prompts an oddly coy response from Kate, and Steve’s response to a wedding-day crisis feels somewhat manufactured.
But there is genuine wit to much of the dialogue and Ellis frames the plot in a time-shifting narrative that keeps the audience on its toes. They leave with more than one question to consider; not just how to date a feminist, but can a true feminist ever be a man?