MURDER, Hanoch Levin, Gate, till 1 December

MURDER: Hanoch Levin
The Gate: Tkts, 020 7229 0706
Runs: till 1 December 2001
Review: Vera Lustig, 10 November

Amateurish performances in reductive, wordy play about the cycle of violence in the Middle East
Taking our places in the small auditorium, we feel queasy. We hear feeble grunts, see a soldier cradling a semi-automatic silhouetted in the window. The smudgy flicker of Belisha beacons outside serve as comforting reminders that our world is not that of the play. Although, on the painted back wall, the sands stretch away to a misty sea, it is a corrupted, evil-smelling world. Happiness and innocence are ephemeral. Violence begets violence. The characters – ciphers really – describe their emotions rather than living them.

As the lights dim, Israeli soldiers taunt and batter their pleading captive. The programme identifies him as 'Arab boy' (a term which has been superseded, in most British reporting at least, by 'Palestinian', with its connotations of nationhood.) His father, a gentle man tainted by loss, goes on to murder 'Groom' and then rape and shoot 'Bride' as they ecstatically (and loquaciously) consummate their marriage. Interspersed with relatively pithy scenes - an ironic song, a young girl spurning a boy's advances - the deadly spiral culminates in a bunch of embarrassed-looking whores tearing apart a young man, represented – and upstaged – by a pillow. With a few honourable exceptions, notably Arab Boy's father, the acting is, to put it politely, mediocre.

If the tone of this review is churlish it is because I take exception to my intelligence being insulted. When Arab Boy's grieving father tells his killers that his son resembled them, had the same aspirations; when Bride tells her killer she has her whole life ahead of her I feel, not moved, but patronised.

Back home, I watch the Royal British Legion Service of Remembrance. More eloquent than Levin's well-intentioned verbiage are the haunted faces of veterans, speaking wordlessly, and without artifice.

Director: Ruth Levin
Design: Bunny Christie
Lighting: Ben Ormerod
Costumes: Emmett J de Monterry
Composer: Corin Buckeridge

2001-11-25 20:04:18