MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE till 29 October
London
MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE
adapted by Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner from the writings of Rachel Corrie
Royal Court (Jerwood Theatre Downstairs) To 29 October 2005
Mon-Sat 7.30pm
Runs 1hr 30min No interval;
TICKETS: 020 7565 5000
www.royalcourttheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 22 October
Valuable document of conflict, with a forceful dramatic conclusion..Rachel Corrie, born 1979; died 2003, was the kind of American who ought to run America (being 1st woman president was an ambition). From childhood she wrote out her ideas; the title of Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner’s distillation of her writings comes from the 10-year old Rachel’s opening to a notebook. A video of the 10-year old speaking at her school’s World Hunger Press Conference, seen at the play’s conclusion, shows she was bright, impassioned and articulate.
These qualities sent her to help Palestinians facing Israeli government attack: “And then the bulldozers come and take out vegetable farms and gardens. What is left for people?” It was attempting to stop one such bulldozer in its tracks that Corrie died, a voiceover eyewitness account describing the event in necessary detail.
An irony this piece implies is that a dozen, a hundred Palestinians so killed would have meant a paragraph or two, a distancing reference to ‘bulldozer deaths’ as a Middle East phenomenon. But killing white, middle-class American woman Rachel Corrie brought home forcefully the human cost of the conflict to the West.
This informative piece needs to tour, and other productions should follow, though Megan Dodds’ performance seems ideal, catching Corrie’s youthful eagerness, questioning, assimilation of facts and untainted idealism.
It reaches its peak in the final sequence, with Rachel’s last email to her mother (would she have been able to write, and post, a letter? Are emails really the death of correspondence?). Till then, there’s been a lot that’s good sense without being especially original. It’s as eyewitness in Gaza she really grabs, having left behind the comfort-zone of bed and bright-red, picture-filled walls at home for the damaged buildings of Palestine - present throughout, as if home in America were only ever temporary.
And when the production’s left behind the awkward realism of Rachel typing (with unerring speed) her emails, coming to her final great argument, breaking off with lifelike inconsequentiality as a door opens on a visitor bringing food. It’s here she talks less of herself, more of the people around her: a culmination well worth the wait.
Rachel Corrie: Megan Dodds
Director: Alan Rickman
Designer: Hildegard Bechtler
Lighting: Johanna Town
Sound/Video: Emma Laxton
Company voice work: Patsy Rodenburg
Associate directors: Tiffany Watt-Smith, Elyse Dodgson
2005-10-24 19:19:17