This new play by Lizzie Nunnery at Theatre 503 in Battersea is a taut 80-minute two-hander about a Zimbabwean refugee and his female caseworker, which was first produced at the Liverpool Playhouse Studio. Wil Johnson as Canaan and Allyson Ava-Brown as Martha generate crackling tension right from the first scene when she breaks the news to him that his temporary leave to remain has run out and his case is being reviewed. As their relationship unfolds over a period of a few weeks it emerges that the stories he is telling about his own life have gaps -- but are they significant ones? Martha the social worker says she just wants the truth, but her own life also has its complications in the shape of a 15-year-old brother who is roaming the streets getting caught up in violence.
The action takes place in a shabby anonymous interview room with strip lights, a desk, two chairs and a filing cabinet. In fact these two characters are meeting first in Canaan's home and then in Martha's, but the featureless setting helps the play take a couple of steps away from its realistic roots. The writing is well structured, with short scenes interrupted by dreams and flashbacks in which Ava-Brown is transformed into Canaan's dead wife Nomsa.
I like the sophisticated combination of sound, lighting, stage action and projection which director Paul Robinson and designer Alex Eales use to show Martha listening to her recording of her interview with Canaan and agonising over whether he has told the full truth or not about his past. The two-hander is a very difficult theatrical genre because it makes it hard to give the audience a variation in perspective on the characters. If you only have characters A and B to play with, you lose the opportunity for character C to come on and say or do something that one of the characters shares with the audience but the other character doesn't know about. Nunnery half-solves this problem with the use of flashbacks and direct speeches to the audience, but not completely. At 80 minutes the play has a slight feeling of being less than complete, with the characters setting off on a mutual journey that may change their lives, but not reaching a real resolution. Both Martha and Canaan are shaped by their respective backstories, but Martha's isn't quite strong enough to provide balance. I wonder whether the writer might have been bolder in exploring the hints of mutual attraction between the two protagonists as well as their relationship with violence. When the play came to an end, I was hoping for more.
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