It’s hard to pin down Nanjing, Jude Christian’s elusive new solo show. In part, it’s autobiographical, digging down into Christian’s own experience of mixed heritage. One side of her family has deep roots in the Isle of Man, while the other hails from China via Malaysia. But it also excavates some of the bloodiest episodes of the last century, scraping away at received historical narratives.
The title is a reference to the Chinese city of the same name, which was brutally invaded by the imperial Japanese army in 1937. Brutal, indeed, feels like too mild a word for the atrocities Christian describes. But this is no simple telling of a history that remains relatively unknown in the UK. The narrative of Nanjing is complicated by Christian, revealing the tangled threads that tie it to other human-made horrors.
Though better known as a director, Christian is a delicate and thoughtful writer, deftly handling the moral complexity of her material. She asks us what we would die for, what we would kill for, what we would forgive.
Nanjing is a show that dwells in the grey, avoiding extremes of black and white while recognising the appeal of absolutes.
If it sounds like a detached academic exercise, Elayce Ismail’s production is far from it. The show has a quiet, measured sense of ritual, building a meditative but haunting mood. A large white sheet becomes shroud, dress and billowing mushroom cloud, while carefully placed rocks both mark and mourn the lives Christian remembers. At the end, as she sets down the final stone, her central question lingers: how far would you go to fight for peace?
At the Royal Exchange, Manchester, until 2 March
