RSAMD, Glasgow
3 stars
Robin Soans’ analysis of the drive behind the terrorist mindset arrived at a crucial time when Out Of Joint produced it in 2005. Drawn from interviews with young British Muslims, former Ugandan child soldiers and assorted bystanders caught in the crossfire, Soans counterpointed these with all too similar words from convicted IRA and UVF veterans, politicians and survivors of Britain’s previous military disaster.
With that war apparently over, this new production performed by RSAMD’s final year acting students arrives on the day proposals were made to reintroduce a version of the long discredited ‘Sus’ law. This allowed the arrest of apparent undesirables for merely looking like they might plant a bomb, and arguably contributed to the UKs inner city riots of the early 1980s.
In artistic terms, you might presume that director Jemima Levick’s cast of eight are way too young to give weight to such serious matters. In actual fact, their grasping of already meaty material strengthens it with an accidental alienation effect. So, despite an opening depiction of Mo Mowlam that’s far too posh, what gradually emerges on a bombed out set dovetailing between prison cell and the debris outside, is a compellingly sensitive look at life on the frontline.
Levick goes with Soans’ carefully measured build up, the telling domestic asides left un-edited, so the full consequences of the pending explosion is made clear without ever sermonising. Joseph Arkley’s grim-faced ex IRA volunteer and, especially, Hannah Donaldson’s switch from the Ugandan survivor to the dancer mistress of the ex ambassador who stood up to his masters, stand out in the most significant use of the verbatim form yet.
The Herald, May 30th 2007
ends
3 stars
Robin Soans’ analysis of the drive behind the terrorist mindset arrived at a crucial time when Out Of Joint produced it in 2005. Drawn from interviews with young British Muslims, former Ugandan child soldiers and assorted bystanders caught in the crossfire, Soans counterpointed these with all too similar words from convicted IRA and UVF veterans, politicians and survivors of Britain’s previous military disaster.
With that war apparently over, this new production performed by RSAMD’s final year acting students arrives on the day proposals were made to reintroduce a version of the long discredited ‘Sus’ law. This allowed the arrest of apparent undesirables for merely looking like they might plant a bomb, and arguably contributed to the UKs inner city riots of the early 1980s.
In artistic terms, you might presume that director Jemima Levick’s cast of eight are way too young to give weight to such serious matters. In actual fact, their grasping of already meaty material strengthens it with an accidental alienation effect. So, despite an opening depiction of Mo Mowlam that’s far too posh, what gradually emerges on a bombed out set dovetailing between prison cell and the debris outside, is a compellingly sensitive look at life on the frontline.
Levick goes with Soans’ carefully measured build up, the telling domestic asides left un-edited, so the full consequences of the pending explosion is made clear without ever sermonising. Joseph Arkley’s grim-faced ex IRA volunteer and, especially, Hannah Donaldson’s switch from the Ugandan survivor to the dancer mistress of the ex ambassador who stood up to his masters, stand out in the most significant use of the verbatim form yet.
The Herald, May 30th 2007
ends
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