Sex is a dirty bomb when deployed as a war weapon. This Fringe First award-winning play from Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig remorselessly illustrates the extreme fallout that follows one such deployment in Guantanamo bay.
Fourteen years after interrogating detainee Bashir (Anthony Bunsee), Alice is happily back on civvie street, USA, though her asthmatic daughter’s sadism, and her husband’s eerily hollow, hippy exterior hint at troubles beneath. Then Bashir pitches up with a fatal disease and a demand for retribution.
This is a ferociously acted piece, beautifully directed by Steven Atkinson; poetic and gritty. Takis’s design is a gorgeously minimalist exercise in warped perspective. But, although her politics hit home, and the originality of expression is eye-wateringly evident, Ya-Chu Cowhig’s play doesn’t stand up to close inspection.
Romantic excess, metaphoric over-inflation and the odd psychological cliché means that this otherwise hugely alluring four-hander isn’t as devastating as its promise.