Theatre

In Spitting Distance
Until May 21
- Last Chance!
This event has finished
Barbican Theatre, Silk St, London, EC2Y 8DS
Rating:
By Bella Todd

Posted: Mon May 12
At the outset of the Second Intifada, an actor makes his way through the treacherous streets of Ramallah to the theatre, where he is starring in a violent play. The only difference between the war raging outside the theatre and the war within, he observes, is that for the former, no one has bought a ticket.

Arriving in London in the month of the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, this one-man play is the work of the Rukab Project, a collective comprising Israeli director Ofira Henig and two Palestinians, writer Taher Najib and actor Khalifa Natour. Performed in Arabic with surtitles , it’s at once instantly engaging and resonant with a voice rarely encountered on the British stage. ‘B’tuuf, b’tuff, b’tuff’ go the surtitles as the actor deconstructs his countryman’s cultural habit of spitting.

On an empty stage, Natour’s fortysomething everyman struggles semi-comically to keep calm through a series of confused encounters with officials. You’d call it Kafkaesque, but this guy knows exactly why he’s being forestalled: he’s a Palestinian with two surnames and an Israeli passport who, following a love affair in Paris, attempts to return to Tel Aviv on September 10, 2002.

Though the limited movements could be honed, Natour’s vocal performance is gutsy and guttural. Based on his own experiences, Najib’s psychologically acute script recalls the writing of Milan Kundera, another artist who emigrated to France following the invasion of his homeland, from a sexualised take on occupation to the sense of almost hysterical joy that can come, perversely, from being denied access to your former life.

‘Stretch the night,’ concludes Natour enigmatically as the lights dim. ‘Stretch it from end to end’. When your country is continually being wrestled from beneath you, the only true homeland is the pillow where you lay your head.