I HAVE BEFORE ME A REMARKABLE DOCUMENT... To 12 July.
London
I HAVE BEEFORE ME A REMARKABLE DOCUMENT GIVEN TO ME BY A YOUNG LADY FROM RWANDA
by Sonja Linden
Finborough Theatre To 12 July 2003
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Sun 3.30pm
Runs 1hr 25min No interval
TICKETS: 020 7373 3842
Review: Timothy Ramsden 22 June
Frontline conviction from the edge of action; gripping and rewarding.Following Steve Chambers' World Music a few weeks ago in Sheffield - a lightly fictionalised view of the 1994 Rwandan genocide - comes this direct account from iceandfire theatre company of the warfare's nightmare consequences for one Rwandan woman.
While Chambers used an epic scope involving political machination in Europe and Africa, Linden focuses tightly on a single relationship - Juliette (named, like World Music's African women by the Catholic church) in her Newham bedsit and Simon, a frustrated poet, failed novelist and discontented husband who's earning a crust teaching writing to asylum-seekers.
It's something of a multi-ethnic, globally-conscious Educating Rita. Except that Juliette comes, not just with a sense of spontaneity that can lift her tutor out of the doldrums, but with experiences he can hardly imagine. Nor, indeed, can most of the audience. When the atrocity account comes it's held back until it's no longer voyeuristic Doreene Blackstock handles it with the intensity of someone who has seen, and only just escaped, death.
For once, Juliette's pride, that no-one should feel sorry for her, surrenders to horror. She is strong on Tutsi pride, which is consistent with personal modesty. It's born of an hospitable society which hasn't crumbled into nerve-end individualism.
That's the case with Andrew, down-at-heel as he feels. Juliette's concern for externals is unselfish she can't believe anyone with stained clothing could have a wife, she loses her belief in Simon as a writer because he has no secretary. But she accepts a life doled out on vouchers, a stomach that can't digest and the persistent coldness of England. And she wants to publish her account of the genocide purely so people can know.
In contrast, even his attempt to write a novel without the egotistical letter 'I' is an act of introspection. Andrew Hawkins handles a rather frequently-seen male intellectual type tactfully, and Linden cuts from the familiar downward-spiral by having Simon's (unseen) wife suggest a way to help Juliette.
A series of video images are unnecessary and distracting. But not very. For in Juliette, Linden and Blackstock jointly create a life-affirming person who can learn and teach others too, someone who rivets the attention and opens the eyes.
Simon: Andrew Hawkins
Juliette: Doreene Blackstock
Director: Drew Ackroyd
Designer: Nicholaos Zavqaliaris
Lighting: Matthew Haskins
Sound: Jane Watkins
Projections: Dimitrios Theoharis
2003-06-22 23:46:24