KEBAB. To 3 November.

London.

KEBAB
by Gianina Carbunariu translated by Philip Osment.

Royal Court (Jerwood Theatre Upstairs) To 3 November 2007.
Mon-Sat 7.45opm Mat Sat 3pm.
BSL Signed 1 Nov.
Post-show Talk 30 Oct.
Runs 1hr 20min No interval.

TICKETS: 020 75655000.
www.royalcourettheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 25 October.

Tough and tender in a cross-Europe voice.
While its larger space revisits two European dramas from the 1950s, the Royal Court’s smaller Theatre Upstairs is displaying the wares of young writers round the continent, in this case Romanian Gianina Carbunariu.

Her play looks at two ends of the new Europe, as young people from post-Communist Romania come to live in the dynamic economy of Ireland. They’re enthused by the sense of civilisation, and the first there, Voicu, while into making money to afford the rent, also wants a sense of belonging to a family.

When his girlfriend Madalina arrives and brings along Bogdan, a post-graduate Visual Arts student she met on the plane, a makeshift family seems to have arrived. But it’s as uncomfortable as the three are when they try using the sofa as a combined bed: close but not intimate. Voicu is a bully, selling Maddy’s body for money, and forcing Bogdan into an enterprise to sell online sex.

The 15-year old girl who started brightly telling Bogdan she comes out really well in photos and works briefly selling kebabs, ends up a piece of meat, beaten for sexual kicks and abandoned, before being thumped and kicked on camera. It’s no surprise she comes to see Bogdan as her way out of all this.

But she’s naïve to think so. The soft-spoken, neatly-dressed student becomes involved with the others in part because he has no ideas for his studies. From the start he’s shown a distaste for her, refusing to take her picture on the plane, refusing to go to a party when she wants to come along. Whatever the Romanian for ‘snob’, it fits him.

Voicu may be a tough hitter, but he understands why Bogdan wouldn’t want to show up with them among his student friends. And there’s a genuine longing, a naivety parallel to Maddy's, in him. Carbunariu brings this out in a late stylistic switch to brief monologues where all see themselves lost in separate fairytales.

This switch jars, though it’s a healthy sign of Carbunariu's ambition. There’s nothing but praise for Orla O’Loughlin’s dynamic production, or the finely detailed performances.

Bogdan: Sam Crane.
Madalina: Matti Houghton.
Voicu: Laurence Spellman.

Director: Orla O’Loughlin.
Designer: Simon Daw.
Lighting: Philip Gladwell.
Sound: Neil Alexander.
Dialect coach: Anne Walsh.
Assistant director: Kat Joyce.

2007-10-26 12:39:36