Fallujah

Fallujah

21 July, 2008
by: Joe Harrod

A warehouse on Brick Lane is the staging post for an ambitious and largely successful anti-war play based on real testimony and footage.

Twenty quid is a lot to pay for a play that sends you reeling back onto the city streets pissed off, disillusioned and hollowed out, but the indelible impressions made by this piece make it well worth the emotional and financial toll.

Writer Dr Jonathan Holmes has done nothing more than piece together testimony. Every word in Fallujah was spoken by the people represented. The truth is harrowing.

With a cast that includes Imogen Stubbs and Harriet Walter, this is a high production effort backed by the ICA. Nitin Sawhney composed an original score, and the sets by Jorge and Lucy Orta are fantastic, evoking press conferences with clustered microphones and hospitals with macabre baby body bags on tin shelving units.

What's more, this is theatre 'in the round'. The audience shuffles after the action, led or cajoled by the actors from scene to scene, missing out on some and practically standing in the firing line for others.

By far the heaviest battering ram employed by Fallujah is truth. Testimonies reveal the assassination of whole families and the use of napalm on the town.

About twenty minutes into the action a sniper described to us his infinite good fortune to have been assigned to Fallujah. It was 'heaven' for someone trained to shoot distant fleeing targets. As we smiled twisted grimaces, I felt myself drawn into a mundane and deadly reality.

Excellent editing and juxtaposition accentuates the power of the testimonies, as well as some brilliant acting. Easily the best performance was given by Chipo Chung. She played Condeleeza Rice, addressing al Jazeera viewers with silver tongued, pseudo tolerant babble. Five minutes later she stood two feet from me as a marine gunner, vowing to kill anything that moves and I don't give a shit if they are innocent.

There are weaker moments. The sound levels need work and Sawhney's soundtrack sounds hastily put together and corny. One or two scenes are mawkish, or downright stomach turning, but then - this is reality. Volunteers do spout platitudes in warzones.

Overall, Fallujah is a very effecting and well orchestrated piece, and something everyone should see. Even if you think you know it all, there's more to learn about the way we fuck the world.

Fallujah runs from Monday to Saturday between 1 May and 2 June 2007 in a warehouse right next to the Truman Brewery off Brick Lane. Performances at 7.30 nightly. It is probably best to book through the ICA website

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Joe Harrod