In the same year Europe marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the UK is due to exit the EU. As we approach that new potential turning point in European history, Two Destination Language’s new show situates itself ambivalently between east and west, here and there, the UK and the rest of Europe.
Writer and performer Katherina Radeva lives between two places: the Bulgaria of her birth and the Britain she has called home for years. In Fallen Fruit, she journeys back there and then, to Bulgarian capital, Sofia, in the dying days of communist power. The show weaves together Radeva’s childhood recollections of 1989 with her parents’ memories, the story of two family friends and the complex upheavals that rippled through the continent that year.
The stage is littered with brown cardboard boxes, surrounding Radeva’s lone figure. These are the building blocks of language, adorned with the letters of the Bulgarian alphabet, and the bricks of the walls that separate nations and ideologies. Throughout the show, structures are built and destroyed, as the detritus of the set increasingly suggests the chaos that follows revolution. The effect sometimes feels like a work-in-progress, but the show’s rough-and-ready aesthetic is oddly appealing.
As she pieces things back together, Radeva implicitly asks: “Was it worth it?” Is everything that’s been built in place of communism worth the effort and the sacrifice that was spent knocking it down? A whole system was dismantled, and in exchange they got Costa and McDonald’s. Fallen Fruit provides no easy answers; its greatest strength is its lack of prescription or explanation.
Within the fragmented structure, some moments work better than others. It is not always clear why particular vignettes are being shown or how one sequence connects to the next, but Radeva’s warm stage presence just about holds it all together. As she sweats with the effort of breaking down walls, her charming smile traded for a grimace of determination, Fallen Fruit reveals the process of change for what it is: hard work.
• At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 26 August.
• Read all our Edinburgh festival reviews.
• This article’s subheading was amended on 10 August 2018. An earlier version misspelled Katherina Radeva’s first name as Katherine.
