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In a startling and visceral contrast to recent Royal Court programming, former usher Diana Nneka Atuona’s first play is an immersive drama about child soldiers in the bloody Second Liberian Civil War.
What Atuona captures really well is the dialogue of her young protagonists. They’re boys giddy with power, excitement and drugs, so thrilled to be playing adults, to be wielding guns, to be on a mission from ‘Papay’ Charles Taylor that they and we almost forget they are kids until they’re startlingly betrayed by childish naivety or pitiful hankering for their mothers. Atuona is of Nigerian descent, not Liberian, but having spent some time in Ghana myself, the West African English spoken by her young protagonists – or ‘small boys’ – certainly rings true. The dialogue is fast, funny, horrible and engrossing.
There are two twists to ‘Liberian Girl’. The main one is in the title: on the run from Taylor’s forces, 14-year-old Martha (Juma Sharkah, convincingly traumatised) is dressed as a boy by her grandmother to save her from rape. Captured, she is forcibly conscripted into a child soldier regiment, where she experiences an unsettling coming-of-age in the company of unstable Killer (Valentine Olukoga) and marginally more laid-back Double Trouble (Michael Ajao).
The second twist is Matthew Dunster’s unexpected staging: though there is limited seating, most of the audience are on our feet the whole time, constantly shunted about Anna Fleischle’s fine, naturalistic set. This sort of stuff can be gimmicky, but it’s a light touch here and works, keeping the adrenaline levels up without needing to resort to extreme deceptions of violence (though there are a couple of loud shootings and a rape).
The staging probably papers over some cracks too. Atuona is good with dialogue but less so on story dynamics. Late on there are references to Martha having committed atrocities off stage, but she scarcely seems to wear them – there are half-hearted attempts to show she’s cracking up a bit, but Atuona essentially keeps her heroine’s nose clean, with little sense she’s even been changed much by the war. It’s perhaps also worth reading up a bit on the conflict and the climactic siege of Monrovia, as there’s little exposition provided (not necessarily a bad thing, mind).
Not the perfect debut play, but an astonishingly gutsy one nonetheless – hopefully there’ll be more from Atuona soon.