Seventy-five years ago, esteemed lawyer Cyril Radcliffe was given the job of drawing a boundary line between India and Pakistan, carving up the former ‘jewel in the crown’ of the British empire into two newly independent states. Just one snag: he’d never even been to India.
Silence, a co-production between the Donmar Warehouse and South Asian company Tara Theatre, explores the appalling humanitarian crisis that followed Partition, as Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs turned against their neighbours. It offers much-needed scrutiny of Britain’s role in this cataclysm. But somehow, its stories feel muffled, never reaching the expected crescendo of fury.
