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Theatre Review: Troubled testimony

An act of storytelling and witness to the civil war consuming Syria brings an anguished human dimension to the fore, says JOE GILL

Oh My Sweet Land
Young Vic Theatre, London SE1
3/5

Oh my Sweet Land begins with a woman walking on stage carrying plastic shopping bags which she unloads onto a kitchen table.

While preparing the traditional Arabic dish kibbeh she begins to tell the story of how she met a Syrian man called Ashraf in Paris who is haunted by the friends and family he has left back in the war zone.

The narrator, Syrian-German actor Corinne Jaber, tells us how one evening she invites Ashraf to eat kibbeh but he spends the whole night on his laptop frantically trying to help a friend escape the secret police back in Damascus.

After a short and passionate affair, Ashraf disappears. Jaber decides to try and find him and so begins an odyssey through Lebanon, Jordan and back into Syria.

Palestinian playwright Amir Nizar Zuabi gives us a finely crafted script full of telling details in which Jaber conveys what it’s like to watch your country ripped asunder from afar.

The play is at its most effective in detailing the minutiae of refugee life as Jaber meets a whole cast of Syrians in Beirut, where every little nook is occupied by those fleeing the fighting.

Each has a story to share, like the famous actor who explains how he saved himself by advising the secret policeman who was kicking him not to ruin his expensive shoes with his blood.

Yet, surprisingly, the drama begins to lose some of its power as Jaber makes her way into Syria from Jordan and we encounter all manner of horrors through the voices of those she meets.

While it may be difficult to believe she would follow Ashraf  into a war zone, that cavil  may not matter.

Such is the hunger to move beyond the statistics of war — nine million displaced, two million refugees, 150,000 dead — and have the Syrian story humanised, that the audience is wholly engaged with Jaber’s performance.

Yet the play packs a lot of voices into a short running time and this may be why the personal impact of this catastrophe doesn’t really come across. Neither does it lead to a better understanding of the conflict, although by keeping politics and explanatory dialogue to a minimum, we do at least feel a little closer to the shattered lives of ordinary people. With more humour and engagement in the narration, though, we might be even more affected by what we witness.

Runs until May 3. Box office: (020) 7922-2922.

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