Kin
National Theatre (Lyttelton), London
With immigration such a charged and contested issue at present, drama can peel away from the slogans and statistics and remind us of the human stories involved. In Kin at the National, Gecko theatre company sets out to create one such show: a deeply personal production from artistic director Amit Lahav that reaches back into his own family history to create a vivid, visually stunning piece of physical theatre. But while the message is powerful, the intimacy that could make it really hit home is missing.
In 1932, Lahav’s grandmother fled Yemen for Palestine to escape persecution. Here, her story becomes the impetus for a broader piece about displacement, in which nameless groups of immigrants are met repeatedly with prejudice, rejection and hostility from the authorities. Gecko’s trademark physical style becomes key to the storytelling. The show (created with the company by Lahav) is characterised by constant movement: characters never settle long before being moved on and there’s a restless, rootless feel to the piece.
Tableaux, beautifully lit and composed, swirl by, and the movement is precisely choreographed, the cast hitting gestures together in a chorus of pain. There’s no discernible script: the actors, from a wide variety of backgrounds, speak their own language but always fast and inaudibly. It’s a deliberate technique: their fear and agitation are palpable, but their individual arguments and expressions are lost to us — they remain a huddle of strangers. The music and costumes likewise slip between cultures and timeframes.
This lack of specificity is both a strength and a weakness. It pulls away from the particular to make the more universal point that displacement and exile are always traumatic, and desperate people are desperate whatever the era or cause. But, crucially, the absence of individual focus and clear narrative becomes distancing. Certain shocking moments — a woman daubed with yellow paint; a man forced to “white up” — stand out, but, for the most part, individual stories become part of the maelstrom. You long for close engagement with characters: the nub of good drama.
The ending, however, which refers more overtly to current events, is immensely powerful. And perhaps the most moving moment is when the performers step forward to disclose their own heritage. This simply makes you want to hear more of their individual stories.
★★★☆☆
January 27, nationaltheatre.org.uk
Kim’s Convenience
Park Theatre, London
Personal experience also informs Ins Choi’s Kim’s Convenience, set in a Toronto corner shop run by a Korean Canadian family and loosely inspired by Choi’s own background. That authenticity is one factor in the drama’s success and its subsequent five-season triumph as a Netflix sitcom.
Now Esther Jun’s sprightly new production (the European premiere) goes back to the original 2011 stage version, which has the great benefit of placing the audience in the store with the characters; Mona Camille’s set is so richly detailed that you’re sorely tempted to step in and buy a couple of snacks for the journey home.
Choi himself plays paterfamilias Mr Kim (Appa to his family), bringing to him the combination of sharp, critical eye and warm affection that charges the whole piece. When we first meet him, as he opens up the shop, Appa is grumbling about the Japanese car parked outside and he later subjects his unwilling daughter, Janet, to a lecture on which customers are most likely to steal, based on a dubious set of stereotypes.
Appa’s views and his determination to meddle in Janet’s life are often at the nub of family arguments, while questions about legacy and belonging — familiar to many immigrant families — rumble through the drama. Appa’s hard work has placed him at the heart of the community, but, as he nears retirement, the shop’s future is in doubt. Janet, who dreams of becoming a photographer, is not interested in taking it on, his son Jung is estranged, and there are sharp-suited developers sniffing around.
Covering all this in the course of one day is a stretch, and there’s no time to explore the issues in depth, while the resolution, though touching, is unrealistically swift. But throughout, Choi’s writing balances spiky honesty with gentle comedy.
The cast meet that spirit. Jennifer Kim’s Janet deftly suggests how conflicted she is between her desire for independence and her affection for her parents; Miles Mitchell nimbly plays a series of customers, each with an ulterior motive; Namju Go carries with grace the underwritten role of wife Umma. And one of the play’s great achievements is to pay tribute to all those open-all-hours shopkeepers who toil away on so many street corners.
★★★★☆
To February 10, parktheatre.co.uk
The Enfield Haunting
Ambassadors Theatre, London
The Enfield Haunting is a mystery. Not just the story — inspired by the infamous 1970s case of two young girls who became the focus of apparent poltergeist activity in a modest house in north London — but the play itself. It’s hard to fathom how, in the hands of such a talented and experienced team, such a crackling story has produced such a tepid result. The play feels muffled, as if events have somehow been swathed in dust sheets, and the pacing is peculiarly solid.
Writer Paul Unwin and director Angus Jackson compress the story into one night, which should lend focus and suspense; they also steer away from pure horror and into a subtler discussion of fear and uncertainty. But the upshot is that the drama becomes bitty and confusing. Younger daughter Janet (Ella Schrey-Yeats) is withdrawn, taciturn and possessed by a weirdly guttural voice; older daughter Margaret (Grace Molony) strides around, making darkly sarcastic pronouncements. Their mother, Peggy, played by Catherine Tate in strangely numb mode, tries to impose normality, while an insistent neighbour (Mo Sesay) and a psychic investigator Maurice Grosse (David Threlfall) keep bursting in.
There’s such great potential here: the paranormal and the psychological rub shoulders and the show raises the possibility that psychic distress may indeed foment inexplicable events. Amid sudden bangs and flashes, ghoulish apparitions and violent disorder, as items of furniture and even Janet herself are flung about (illusions by Paul Kieve), a tapestry of emotional issues emerges. Real-life spectres include an absent and possibly abusive father, the girls’ dawning adolescence, the family’s financial insecurity, revelations about a former occupant of the house and, in the case of Grosse, the loss of a child. The intruders — real or otherwise — are notably all male.
All this could be both unsettling and intriguing and yet here it runs into the ground. There’s no time to let ideas bed in or breathe, the dialogue feels unnatural and the characters sketchy, despite the best efforts of the cast. Everyone looks marooned. A bumpy night, but sadly not in a good way.
★★☆☆☆
To March 2, atgtickets.com
