The new play from Olivier award-nominated two Palestinians go dogging playwright Sami Ibrahim is a curious and provocative premise, terribly executed. Three potential aid workers are undergoing training in a London centre, but it’s two of them – Khaled (Luca Kamleh Chapman) and Sarah (Rosa Robson) – using hypothetical scenarios and role-play as refugees and aid workers to explore a romantic relationship which is the central plot in this slow and incoherent two-hour production.
I mean, this could have been one of the most divisive and controversial plays staged in London at the moment: two Westerners – one with a superiority complex and another with an inferiority complex – fetishising the refugee crisis for their own gratification, akin to the shocking ideas and dynamics explored in Slave Play, but without any coherence or direction from Ibrahim or director Jaz Woodcock-Stewart.
Against the unremarkable expanse of Rosie Elnile’s office set, the narrative is tiny and repetitive. I found myself struggling to focus during an uneventful first act, as each session follows the same tired pattern of Dan (the third prospective aid worker, Peter Corby, who is mostly awkward and naturalistic comic relief in a tonally dry show) asking how people’s weekends were as he pours himself an excessive coffee, trainer Nicki (Mariah Louca) ignoring a phone call only to take it on the second ring, and someone taking another prompt card from the pack to act out.
When Khaled and Sarah engage in conversation, these discussions are uninteresting and monotonous. In contrast, group sessions are tense and delivered with little space between lines. Even then, many scenes are only a matter of minutes, so if the incongruous pacing doesn’t kill our interest, then the endless stop/start of interactions certainly do.
The thing is, is that by not sufficiently establishing one individual as a standout protagonist (turns out that would, in time, be Khaled), we’re led to believe at first that the central arc is the trio’s progression through the course, but it isn’t, and as such so many other elements of the play feel superfluous. Dan is just there for jokes, and we’re supposed to care for the health of Nicki’s sister, but it really doesn’t add anything of consequence. Equally meaningless is the decision to have live video cameras capture later scenes of role-play. It may well be easily dismissed as the trainees recording themselves “for monitoring and training purposes” (to use that common phrase), but there’s nothing gained from closely inspecting the facial features of the actors in closer detail – in fact, on numerous occasions key characters are obscured by the two large TV screens thrust downstage.
If we’re meant to feel like we’re intruding or being invasive by watching the two lovers on the silver screen, and that’s the justification, then there’s little explanation afforded as to just why they’re engaging in this perverse ritual. We get a sense for how, when the inevitable climactic fallout occurs between the couple and they decide the best way to resolve it is to act out a scene in which aid worker Laura (Sarah) is trying to appeal to a stubborn and untrusting Ali (Khaled), but hardly any time is afforded to the why. I couldn’t identify a single moment where any character thinks, ‘hang on, there’s definitely some racist, privileged Western mindset being played with here and it’s utterly messed up’, so make of that what you will.
Even on a more practical level, the play’s billing suggests we may witness a contrast between the London training centre (‘here’) and the actual crisis on the ground (‘there’). That doesn’t happen, and I had to check the playtext to confirm whether or not, at times, we are actually seeing the same actors play refugees and aid workers. The blurring of the lines between role-play and reality is messy and confusing, Nicki’s mobile phone ringing during one scene snapping us back to the London training centre, before we return to the fruitless hypothetical scenarios with her taking part too. It would have been helpful to have the role-play denoted by a pronounced change in costume design from Tomás Palmer, to make it far easier to follow along.
We aren’t rooting for any of the characters in this play. Khaled is broody and guarded while Sarah is trying to reach out to him to help him deal with his emotional baggage. So many ideas aren’t unpacked here, though, and ultimately, while all of the cast give comfortable performances, there’s nothing engaging or challenging about this work – a missed opportunity.
★
Multiple Casualty Incident is now playing at the Yard Theatre until 8 June.
It will be British Sign Language (BSL) interpreted and captioned on 16 and 30 May respectively.
Production Images: Marc Brenner.
Disclaimer: I was invited to watch ‘Multiple Casualty Incident’ for free in exchange for a review of the performance as a member of the press. I did not receive payment for this article and all opinions stated above are honest and my own.
Liam O'Dell 