38. Remembrance Day - Royal Court Upstairs

I must admit that I’m starting to feel a little nervous that what seems like an almost miraculous run of excellent productions can’t possibly last. But the Royal Court is nearly always a good bet not to let the side down (though they really need to sort out a handful of health and safety issues that are making me twitch – less propping doors open with fire extinguishers, more actually accessible alarm cords in the disabled toilets). Plus I’ve had many good experiences with Eastern European plays in the last few years and with Remembrance Day by Ukrainian Aleksey Scherbak; I found a production that could almost have been tailor written for me. Which, you know, is always nice.


Seriously, this was absolutely brimming with the sort of ideas that make me coo curiously:- societies relationship with the less pleasant parts of its past, particularly with its failures; different cultures and communities trying to live side by side; how we build and relate to our cultural identities; polarisation of ideals; soldiers identities; and dysfunctional families. These are all ideas that I’m also currently working through in stories of my own and the chance to see what another person makes of them was fascinating. On top of which I thought the writing was genuinely very good, managing to encompass a wide range of ideas and arguments, refusing to simplify a complicated issue and with moments that I thought were clever and illuminating.

All of which was supported by both an excellent cast and some really interesting and effective staging choices. I thought the set worked very well and was deceptively simple, with the reversals of inside and outside and the cast pulling the world together and shaping it in organic ways within the play. I particularly loved the way each characters individual spheres overlapped each other, with the boundaries breaking down between each tightly crammed community. An idea which I thought was excellently highlighted in the choreography, with the separate characters seeming to live in each other’s pockets – a particular favourite being a moment where Paulis complained angrily that he felt like the Russians were in his house, eating his food at the same time as Lyosha literally did eat a bit of his sausage.

Given the strength of the ensemble of players it seems churlish (not to mention difficult) to pick out anybody to commend, each time I try to highlight somebody; I remember others who deserve equal praise. So let’s just say that I thought Michael Nardone, Michelle Fairley, Struan Rodger, Ewan Hooper, and Sam Kelly were all superb, and though he didn’t have a huge deal to do in this, Iwan Rheon remains one of my actors to watch out for in the future.

The only thing that really threw me was Ruby Bentall as Anya – not because of her performance, which was in fact beautifully nuanced – but because she seemed overly young to me. It made me feel as if they were aiming for a sense of innocence corrupted, but that plunged what had been a very subtle portrayal of conflict into a much less interesting good vs. evil dilemma. I suspect this is also connected to why the ending lacked any real power for me.

Really though this was a minor point in an otherwise superb production and may have had a very different effect for anyone else and it certainly didn’t ruin my enjoyment of a play I found nothing short of fascinating.