Igor Memic, winner of the 2020 Papatango new writing prize, was born in Mostar, the ancient city in what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina that was a principal casualty of the 1992-95 wars after the racial and religious disintegration of communist Yugoslavia.
Memic draws powerfully on his experience in Old Bridge, titled for the Ottoman-era crossing above the Neretva river, setting for a diving competition among local men. The 1988 dives lead to a meeting between Mina, a Bosniak Muslim, and Mili, a Croatian Catholic, who become the latest theatrical successors to the Montagues and Capulets.
Set in a time little explored in western fiction, the play’s affecting romance and vivid documentary detail (such as why Bosnian cigarettes are packed upside down) are likely to be what appealed to Papatango judges, and will also engage audiences. But the performance exposes problems with the script.
The biggest, a common apprentice fault, is imbalance between narration and dramatisation. Around a third of the text is the older Mina (Susan Lawson-Reynolds) telling us from the present day what happened. Such retrospective framing works better in novels than on stage, where the acting out of events by the younger Mina (Saffron Coomber), Mili (Dino Kelly), and their friends Sasha (Emilio Iannucci) and Leila (Rosie Gray) inevitably have energy and tension – the actors crackling with youthful charm, wit and sexual energy – that dissipate when we jolt back to the voiceover.
On-stage commentators are generally employed to speed exposition and testify to long echoes (as the old lawyer does in Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge), but the senior Mina is under-characterised. And, though the horror of the Mostar siege is effectively suggested in the “past” scenes of Selma Dimitrijevic’s staging, the audience is given no help with who is fighting who and for what.
With strong jokes and jolts, Memic shows high promise but next time needs to go deeper and clearer from his jumping-off point.
At the Bush theatre, London, until 20 November
