HOME-SICK. To 28 August.

London

HOME-SICK
by Dafna Rubinstein

New End Theatre 27 New End NW3 To 28 August 2005
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Sat & Sun 3.30pm
Runs 1hr 10min No interval

TICKETS: 0870 033 2733
www.newendtheatre.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 6 August

Enough to make a dramatic meal, but not as served up here.Ecorche Theatre's production looks in close-focus at the impact of military conscription in Israel on one family, whose son has died in action aged 19. (As the production is in memory of a 29-year old who died in 2002, there may be a biographical element, which has to be ignored here.)

Brief movement sequences interpolated into the play are its strongest sections. The stretching limbs seeking contact between dead Joav on stage throughout, trying to join the conversations ensuing when a young journalist comes to write up his death and his grieving mother Sera, evoke the agony of loss which the scripted scenes merely talk about.

Sourer moments with Yoav's girlfriend Rona and father Shalom present bad-temper rather than exploring the individual depths of mood; the characters become drearily self-absorbed, their feelings failing to connect with the audience.

Criticisms of the army made in the play have particular force because they come from an Israeli family. Food's the principle one in Israel, as elsewhere, an army marches on its stomach. In an opening scene, one of few where Joav is alive, Sera has a meal prepared, laughingly asking why she bothers as her family slip in tardily to eat. Yet the army sent her son, and others, into action underfed.* As a result, he was mistakenly shot by his own side.

How well-documented is this? If there's any basis in reality for the allegation it deserves fuller discussion. Yet the issue's never taken outside the family despite a journalist hovering. Nor is Joav's wider criticism of army operations against Palestinians taken further than mere statement; the dead man's words have no impact among his survivors.

If political points have no room to develop in the play, the personal side needs more than these performances can provide. Constant beseeching' cadences, urging significance, become tediously generalised, while introspection becomes mere glumness without more variety and detail than we have from the dead man's father and lover. And, even as a failed journo-in-the-making, Gil is unbelievably inert and inept, characteristics that sadly go for this production overall.

*Apparently not; I am told the Israeli army would not so such a thing and that the play makes no such statement. It seems the troops were overtired rather than underfed.

Gil: James Turpin
Yoav: Grant Orviss
Shalom: Steven Anstee
Sera: Raquel Roylance
Rona: Gemma Boaden

Director/Projection/Sound: Dafna Rubinstein
Designer: Wai Yin Kwok
Lighting: Karl Lawton, Christopher Knowlton, Matt Daw
Choreographer: Mira Rubinstein

2005-08-07 13:43:14