MIRACLE IN RWANDA. To 27 August.

Edinburgh 2007 Fringe.

MIRACLE IN RWANDA
by Leslie Lewis Sword.

Gilded Balloon Teviot, Bristo Place To 27 August 2007.
no performance 20 Aug.
3pm & 7.45pm.
Runs 1hr. No interval.

TICKETS. 0131 668 1633 or Fringe BO 0131 226 0000.
www.miracleinrwanda.com
Review Thelma Good 12 August 2007.

Well crafted dramatic power.
Sometimes during the Fringe people, trying to persuade me to review a play, say, “It’s based on a true story. It really happened.” “So?” I remark. “I’d rather experience an amazing imagination.”

But every Fringe I go to some plays based on real people and events. Sometimes they disappoint, they are too earnest or the writing or the actor/s is/are just not up to it. I also sometimes feel that the play and writer have traded on and gained emotional power from real events, a form of dramatic and imaginative cheating.

This one woman play didn’t give me those feelings. But despite its well-crafted dramatic power I wish I’d been able to applaud and then unprompted respond to the desire seeing it had given me, to find out more about Immaculée Ilibagiza and her companions and to try to help war orphans. Miracle in Rwanda is based on the book Immaculée wrote about the effects on her of three months of genocide carried out by extremist Hutus militias in Rwanda in 1994, when at least half a million Tutsis and thousands of moderate Hutus were killed.

She found amazing strength and faith despite being sheltered in increasingly cramped and difficult conditions in a tiny bathroom in a Hutu pastor’s house with five, then seven other females. American Leslie Lewis Sword draws you so into the story it’s possible to forget she is the actor.

By the end of the piece when Immaculée manages not only to say again the Lord’s prayer all the way through but to say it with the man who killed nearly all of her family, you may think it’s not just Immaculée who could see visions. The power of Sword is such that it’s as though it’s the real Immaculée enacting on stage the events that happened to her in Rwanda.

And that’s why I found, after the considerable applause, the commercial from the actress for Immaculée’s book and the scholarship charity the only manipulative moment in the whole hour.

Performer: Leslie Lewis Sword.

Director/Co-Creator : Edward Vilga.

2007-08-17 02:48:35