42. Mogadishu - Lyric Hammersmith

At this point I have been staring at a blank screen for at least twenty minutes desperately trying to work out how to describe how powerful Mogadishu was. But as my twitter review – “Well... fuck” (in the best possible way) – certainly won’t do, I might as well accept I’m not going to do this justice and get on with it.


I squeezed this in at the last minute based on glowing recommendations all round and they were more than deserved.  Watching Mogadishu was something like being punched in the gut, one of the most powerful and thought provoking pieces of drama I have seen this year. Incredibly well crafted by Vivienne Franzmann, something of a writing masterclass. In places incredibly crude, incredibly funny, moving, clever, nuanced and capturing characters in such deft strokes that there’s never a moment that you don’t believe these are real people.

I also loved how it continually challenged my expectations, building me up to the point where I thought I knew what would happen or what a character would be like and was completely wrong – but completely wrong in a way that didn’t leave me frustrated or baffled or lost, but gave me a burst of mental adrenaline. A prime example of this was Jason’s father Ben, played superbly by Fraser James, who I had already formed a very strong impression of before he’d even appeared, one which was completely mistaken, when he finally appeared it took me a moment to readjust but the character as we saw him was so much more interesting and exciting. And then for the rest of the production it was a case of seeing more and more sides of his character, with a creeping insidious horror. And as these different sides were revealed, it made so much more sense.
Each character was just as deftly drawn and the examination of how we relate to other people – whether it’s out families or our contemporaries or our colleagues or our bullies, are incredibly captured. The plot twists and turns and is gripping throughout and as the ending emerged it was horrifying and deeply powerful and lingered with me for days. Truly incredible writing.

On top of which both the performances and the staging were equally powerful. There were so many strong performances, particularly from the young cast and I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that I might be watching some of the actors of our generation starting out – particularly when I was watching Malachi Kirby as Jason, who was hypnotic throughout, with an incredibly subtle emotional performance. I also loved the set, with the revolving cage at moments both including and excluding the audience,  creating the sensation of trapped animals and an astonishing familiarity from my own schooldays. Truly amazing.