French playwright Estelle Savasta’s two-hander, receiving its UK premiere in Kirsten Hazel Smith's translation, is a tender coming-of-age story. At the outset it feels like a fairytale, yet it turns into a vision of lives shaped by migration, boundaries and sacrifice.
In a country that’s not identified, Nour shares a modest house with Youmna, who is apparently not her mother but has raised her affectionately since she was a ‘tiny little fledgling’. Now she is a ‘big little one’ and can travel to a place where she will have better opportunities. Initially this involves pretending to be a boy. It also means renouncing the sheer richness of her communication with Youmna, who is deaf.
En route, Nour complains that she’s like a watermelon being transported to market, and after settling into her new environment she comments that her life there ‘has landed on top of me like a bad joke’. Her experiences seem less harsh than expected (perhaps they’re deliberately watered down), but Charmaine Wombwell captures this fidgety, passionate character’s increasing isolation.
Omar Elerian’s sensitive production, which I saw in preview, suggests the vertigo of dislocation and the intimacy of the bond between Nour and Nadia Nadarajah’s calm, expressive Youmna. Interweaving speech, British sign language and creative captioning, it’s a quiet and thoughtful piece, albeit one that can feel a touch static and remote.
Until April 27 (020 8743 5050, bushtheatre.co.uk)
