Dalia Taha, a Palestinian poet and playwright, is not the first person to see that children are the ultimate victims of military conflict. But in this 90-minute play, she gives a vivid account of the psychic damage done to children growing up in a city like Gaza and of the elaborate pretences adopted by their parents to protect them from reality.
Taha’s focus is on two families who have refused the dangerous sanctuary of a shelter or school and eke out an existence in a deserted tenement. In particular, we see the effect this has on their offspring. The 11-year-old Lubna is told by her father that the falling bombs are fireworks and the overhead planes ambulances, but she still has a death fixation and is preoccupied with martyrdom. Her 12-year-old companion, Khalil, wears flashing red trainers and plays Ninja Turtle games with his mum, but is no less disturbed and displays a tendency towards violence. Taha’s point is clearly that any hope of normality is fractured in a military crisis and that, while children are the immediate victims, the besieged adults are enmeshed in their own web of pretence.
The play is at its best as a report from the front line of an unending conflict: it relaxes its grip only in the set-piece solo speeches where characters recount their dreams and nightmares. But the remarkable feature of Richard Twyman’s production in the Theatre Upstairs is the assurance of the two child actors (there are alternate casts on different nights). Shakira Riddell-Morales as Lubna suggests a shrewd awareness behind her seeming vulnerability, while Yusuf Hofri as Khalil shows how one product of a foreshortened childhood is a desire for retaliatory vengeance. Among the adults there are strong performances from Sirine Saba as a bereaved mother nursing her grief like a weapon, and from Shereen Martin as a woman coping with a deluded husband as well as a damaged son. Even if Taha’s play, translated by Clem Naylor, doesn’t deal directly with the political context, it offers a frighteningly convincing picture of the tragedy of lost innocence.
• Until 14 March. Box office: 020-7565 5000. Venue: Royal Court, London
