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by DYSPLA, directed by bielecki&bielecka

DYS(THE)LEXI, Toronto Fringe Festival, Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, Toronto

July 3-14, 2013

The title of the play The Taliban Don’t Like My Knickers by the British group DYSPLA, an organization that furthers storytelling by dyslexics, might lead a person to believe the play is some sort of farce in the “Carry On” tradition updated to the war in Afghanistan.  So does the promo photo for the production featuring a man in a turban wearing mascara and red lipstick.  The truth is just the opposite.  Taliban is a serious play about the complex subject of what happens when a woman is imprisoned for ten days by the militant organization.

The action is based on the real-life story of British journalist Yvonne Ridley working for the Sunday Express who was captured by the Taliban in 2001 and because she wearing a burqa and carrying a camera was accused of being a spy, an offence punishable by death.  She was held for ten days until the British High Commissioner to Pakistan and an a Taliban mullah negotiated her release.  While in captivity, Ridley was asked to convert to Islam but refused.  She gave her word to her captors that she would read the Koran after her release.  The strangest part of the story – treated only as an epilogue in the play – is that not only did Ridley read the Koran as she promised and then convert to Islam, but she then became an outspoken defender of Muslim causes around the world.

The play itself is presented in Brechtian style.  A chalk line drawn on the floor represents the room with one door and one window where Ridley (Sarah Savage), here referred to only as “Y” is kept.  The dialogue consists of her interactions with her personal guard known as “P” (Yaron Shavit).  Both Y and P speak their dialogue in the first person but narrate their actions in the third person, a classic alienation technique.  As directed by bielecki&bielecka, a “visual storymaking agency”, a different film loop is projected on a screen on the back wall that highlights the theme of each scene.

The acting of Savage and Shavit is excellent.  Savage displays the wide range of Y’s emotional and intellectual responses to her captivity and her guard, from defiance and frustration to self-control to understanding that her capture is only a small event in a world-historical struggle.  Shavit, meanwhile, shows P’s mixture of curiosity and disgust at the behaviour of the first non-Afghani woman he has ever encountered.  He finds it outrageous that she should hang her washed knickers in her cell window for all the soldiers to see (hence the title).  Yet, beneath the layer of his cultural background, Shavit also shows that P feels a basic human sympathy for his charge.

Given two such strong and multifaceted performances it is a shame that the creators decide to end the 50-minute-long play with a montage of footage of the real Ridley giving speeches and interviews after her conversion to Islam.  On the one hand, it is fascinating to see the 180º turnabout in Ridley’s thinking represented by film of the woman herself.  Bielecki&bielecka have so edited the sequence that Ridley speaks some phrases word for word in various settings as if brainwashed.  On the other hand, it is a shame that so theatrical a play should end with the audience watching a film.  While fascinating, the filmed ending looks like a failure of theatrical imagination. 

What Taliban best achieves is the portrayal Y’s Kafkaesque imprisonment.  Y wants to make a phone call, but discovers that the telephone is not working or, rather, works only for P.  The only hint of any wavering in Y’s faith is when she repeats the prayer that P is speaking outside her window.  But our impression is that since she does not speak Arabic, she is repeating the prayer out of boredom simply because she has heard it so many times.  Seen purely as a piece of theatre it is difficult not to view Ridley’s conversion as a product of Stockholm Syndrome where a victim comes to identify with her captors.  The vehemence of her defence of Islam looks like the vehemence one finds in any new convert.  This seems to be the only way to link the Y we meet on stage with the Ridley we see on film.

Bielecki&bielecka seek to make the audience complicit in Y’s imprisonment by introducing us as Afghani soldiers and by selecting one audience member to serve as an aide to P.  Nevertheless, while the interplay of Y and P creates an atmosphere of steadily mounting tension, the documentary film conclusion seems to negate the compassion for Y that has been aroused.  The play is an unusual experiment in manipulating the sensibilities of the audience but it does not fully work.  We don’t know if the stage events are meant to support Ridley’s conversion or to critique it.  After the filmed conclusion, we long to return to Ridley’s stage persona as Y to see how she reacts since she, not the woman in the film, is the one we’ve come to know.      

              

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Linette Beaumont as Y and Francis Adams as P.  ©2013 DYSPLA.

For tickets, visit http://fringetoronto.com.