AMID THE CLOUDS. To 23 July.

London

AMID THE CLOUDS
by Amir Reza Koohestani translated by Vali Mahlouji

Royal Court (Jerwood Theatre Upstairs) To 23 July 2005
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Sat 4pm
Runs 1hr 25min No interval
TICKETS: 020 7565 5000
www.royalcourttheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 20 July

Quietly intense, sustained story of a long journey told with minimal movement.This is a good answer to the question of what theatre can do that cinema can't. Part of the Royal Court's artist development Genesis programme, and its International Playwrights Series, developed in a 2004 International Residency, a co-production with several European Theatres, first seen at the Fadjr Festival, its setting is suitably international. Yet it focuses on people, presenting a crossing-continent story with no resort to realism, departing from objective reality in search of characters' internal states.

It opens in darkness (slightly compromised by the English surtitles for the Farsi script). And it goes on being dark. Images of water, of drowning and near drowning, are picked out by the (sadly uncredited) lighting. Characters are discovered underwater (in tanks that constitute the only set) as their story unfolds in voiceover. Migration through the troubled Balkan territories brings drowning calmly yet graphically described; death and loss are built into life. So is the violation of an innocence that does not even understand the nature of that violation.

Though life becomes merely insecure as opposed to dangerous when the characters reach the lands of the European Union, the tone barely lightens. Humanity is reduced to barest essentials not the overt cruelty some writers have found at the bottom of personality, but either a grasping for someone else or a move to save oneself.

It takes the concrete aspects of the cross-Europe journey to balance with a sense of progress the drowning images and intense danger as Imour transports the pregnant Girl on his back across wild, bandit-infested mountains. It's merely 2 actors and a wooden palette circling the stage, but with the hypnotic voiceover the image is stronger than any amount of cinematic snow, wind and bleak scenery.

Shiva Fallahi's reticent, naïve Girl and Hassan Madjouni's withdrawn Imour fit entirely into a play which depicts external death and danger through its imprints on the character and behaviour of two people inextricably intertwined with their origins - though Imour is travelling to England; the play ends as he crosses the English Channel, still seeing himself back in the drownings that started the story.

Cast:
Shiva Fallahi, Hassan Madjouni

Director: Amir Reza Koohestani
Sound: Mahin Sadri Moonshangayi

2005-07-21 10:04:28