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Tension slowly builds for much of this adaptation of Babak Anvari’s BAFTA-winning 2016 film, where a mother and young daughter are haunted by a demonic djinn in a bombarded Tehran, toward the end of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War. Arguably, it builds a little too slowly.
On the plus side it’s good to be reminded that ordinary and extraordinary lives go on within an embattled, oppressed civilisation that a certain lunatic recently threatened with obliteration. And this is an atmospheric, technically impressive staging that puts Leila Farzad’s (I Hate Suzie, Two Weeks in August) flair for strident impatience centre stage.
Carmen Nasr’s script effectively and claustrophobically distills the wider screen locations to the apartment of Farzad’s Shideh; the cellar where she and her neighbours shelter from attacks; and the roof that’s dramatically pierced by a missile just before the interval.
The meticulous stoking of atmosphere and tension in Nadia Latif’s production initially feels more subtle than the jump scares and crash blackouts of recent stage chillers like 2:22 a Ghost Story and Paranormal Activity. Which were great, horripilating fun themselves, by the way. (That means something that makes your hair stand on end: I’m trying to popularise the word.)
Eventually, though, Latif is forced to resort to the same tactics. And after the first thrilling shock, the djinn – a Venom-style rubberized humanoid with clattering talons – is a lot less scary than the film’s fluttering, enveloping chador/niqab. Worse, Nasr puts into words what Anvari implies: that the djinn is the manifestation of Shideh’s frustrations.
Her medical training was interrupted by the Ayatollah’s Islamic Revolution in 1979 and her equilibrium has been shattered by her mother’s death and Saddam Hussein’s bombs. She is resentful of her doctor husband Iraj’s posting to the frontline, and stern and snappish with their seven-year-old, Dorsa (a superbly, unnervingly assured Erin Jemmotte at the performance I saw).
Nasr adds details: Iraj pressures Shideh for a second child. Shideh shares a tipple with her philosophical neighbour Mrs Fakur (Souad Faress) to underscore the pre-Khomeini freedom they enjoyed. If we don’t entirely get the message, there’s a poster for a French riviera exhibition of Miro sculptures and ceramics on the skewed and foreshortened living room set by Ben Stones. “This is Tehran, not Paris,” says a terse, black-robed female functionary, criticising the immodesty of Shideh’s headscarf and dashing her hopes of returning to university.
There are sophisticated laughs amid the gloom, as well as glib and simple ones. Mrs Fakur’s Paris-based son implores her to join the exodus leaving Tehran, after someone told him about the missile lodged above her head. “Can’t keep anything private these days,” she grumbles.
The mildly comic sight of Shideh working out in her living room to a Jane Fonda aerobics tape is soured by the realisation that mere possession of a VCR is dangerous. Relieved titters follow the scares. It’s not so funny when you realise landlord Mr Ebrahimi would prefer Shideh not to revive another neighbour, the demented, incontinent Mr Bijari after the missile strike because… well, if there isn’t a man to do it he should be left to die.
Farzad is impressive but decisively not warm in the lead role. Her eyes radiate resentment and Shideh’s maternal affection is given on sufferance. I’m sure many parents will sympathise, whether they’re under missile attack or not. But it makes the final speech, where Shideh confesses her innermost emotions, feel like something of a cop out.
Saoud gives a lovely character sketch as Mrs Fakur, and there is nice work from Nicholas Karimi as Iraj and Mona Goodwin as the hugely pregnant, devout and superstitious Mrs Ebrahimi.
Does the stage adaptation justify itself, though? Yes and no. An Iranian story has been brought to the stage by a British-Lebanese writer and a British-Sudanese director. It works as an effective chiller with some moments of genuine startlement. It also blunts the subtlety of the source material. This is heresy for a theatre devotee but… maybe just watch the film instead.
To 4 July, Almeida.co.uk
