“On Wednesday October 23, 2002, at 9.05pm, 42 Chechens attacked a theatre in
These words, handwritten on a neatly guillotined sheet of lined paper and handed to me by an unsmiling watcher as I entered the auditorium, set the scene for the ninety-minute drama that was to follow. By conflating the events of the three day siege of the Dubrovka theatre into the personal accounts of three witnesses – a doctor with the emergency services, a hostage, and a ‘Black Widow’ would-be suicide bomber – playwright Torsten Buchsteiner has sought to take us inside the chaotic experience of 850 Russian hostages and their Chechen assailants. This is a play about the personal ramifications of geopolitics. Told almost entirely through three intersecting monologues, it is a welcome attempt to humanise the aggressors – and victims – on both sides of the Chechen struggle for independence.
Emily Bowker gives the most assured performance of the evening in the role of Tamara, constantly on edge as she narrates her fears for her mother and daughter who are being held in the theatre, but it is Nia Davies whose performance in the role of Olga best sums up the message of the play – that anyone who has suffered enough can be driven to take extreme measures in the name of justice and restitution. Her closing speech is a tour de force; bloodcurdling in its ferocity, yet humane in its simplicity.
Each of the three intersecting stories has its own measure of complexity and pathos, and each of the three women telling them is compelling to watch (the decision to omit any male perspective is a curious one, never accounted for). However, dialogue between the three is sparse – a real shame, since it is in these exchanges that this cast and David Tushingham’s translation are at their finest. The decision for a play set inside a theatre to offer actors so little opportunity to interact directly feels like a missed opportunity. The silent chorus, portrayed by members of St Edward’s School, could also have been offered a more prevalent role. They punctuate the three stories with abstract movement sequences, but the meaning of these is at times unclear – a pity, given the evident talent on display among this younger cohort, all of whom were thoroughly engaged and engaging – much like the drama itself.