This production startles not only with its stories of women held captive in the UK’s detention system but through its surprising delivery. Produced by BÉZNĂ Theatre and Roma feminist theatre company, Giuvlipen, the drama is not presented as gritty social realism but with high-wire experimentalism.
There are handheld cameras, voiceovers, a back screen with projected images and scenes interspersed with song. Multiple languages are used to convey the confusions and powerlessness of the women detained inside a detention centre; they are sent official letters they cannot read and given solicitors with whom they cannot communicate.
Written by Sînziana Cojocărescu and directed by Nico Vaccari, these stories have been taken from real experience of women living little reported, often invisible lives. They capture everything from the daily indignities of detention and cold indifference from the authorities to war trauma, self-harm and suicide.
Faiza (Alaa Taha), from Sudan, is in a state of disbelief after miscarrying her baby. Maria (Zita Moldovan), from Romania, has been forcibly separated from her children, now in care, and cannot get a solicitor to fight for their return. These women, it is clear, have lost everything they love. We are not given their backstories but feel undercurrents of its trauma.
Their scenes are interwoven with those holding them in custody: Elena (Mihaela Drăgan), a Romanian-born guard trying to stay removed from the women’s plight while Kelly (Lizzie Clarke) cannot but be moved. The actors change clothes and don wigs to play multiple parts and are uniformly compelling.
Scenes enact brief but chilling moments in their lives, with snatches of repeated dialogue. It seems non sequitur and random at the start but comes together slowly and is accompanied by the synthesised dread in Daniel Balfour’s sound design.
But some of the performative elements feel a little arcane or overdone. The handheld camera at the front brings intensity but also feels distracting and there is a recurring image of a man with a bloody head wound which is under-explained. Sometimes the welter of multimedia distracts from rather than builds on the force of the drama.
But even when the theatricality is over-egged the overall effect is powerful. By the end, it feels like a call to arms, a piece of activism and art. We cannot be anything but appalled by what we see.
At Riverside Studios, London, until 8 March.
