A father and daughter struggle with the global context of their relationship with ferocity but surprisingly few real debates in The Witness at Royal Court.
Steeped in secrets and lies, at first undetectable and then skilfully revealed one after another, the polished narrative structure of Vivienne Franzmann's The Witness confuses and stretches further the already taught bond between photojournalist turned wedding photographer Joseph and his Cambridge undergraduate daughter Alex. But while the debate at the centre of their tension unfolds in a series of reveals, there isn't enough of a moral struggle to really make us ponder the heart of what is being discussed.
Having been rescued from genocide in Rwanda as a baby, Alex (the excellently cast Pippa Bennett Warner) is now nineteen and hurtling towards an uncertain future. Worse, her fellow students' reactions to the tragic and political photo in which she features shatters her idea of who she is and who she wants to be. A few life-altering decisions later and she's watching MTV on her father's sofa going back and forth over the ways we consume art and tragedy while flicking through Grazia and berating her dad for his fondness for luxury cheeses.
This comfortable setting, Alex's immaturity, her curiosity and sense of humour are all matched by her intense sensitivity which allows for a steep learning curve to emerge from this naturalistic script. It also allows a certain kind of subtle poetry to emerge, the kind that is personified in Joseph (a perfect part for Danny Webb), a man who has spent his life capturing tragedy, famine and war who wants to end his days taking photographs of people at their happiest. There's also something more honest and ugly about an educated, well travelled supposedly left-field thinker who still sees fit to refer to an annoying German woman as “sauerkraut Greta”
But as his daughter learns more about her past and asks all the right questions, Joseph doesn't challenge her as much as he should to really make this the ponderous play it could be. Given that we are presented by the subject of a poignant, divisive photograph and the photographer responsible, Vivienne has given herself a clever entry to a sticky mess of a debate and yet things are disappointingly clear.
Until, that is, the penultimate scene when a tirade of anger, assumptions and more revelations come spilling out, ripe for dissection. “You took pictures!” accuses Alex, “I bore witness” rebuts Joseph, “for the good white folk back home” she says, “it was to stop it” he says. But this fascinating flame of a fight is disappointingly short lived. Instead, the images that linger are that of a father and daughter being momentarily fierce and somehow finding their way back to civility and love. On this domestic level, it is brilliant but it lacks the consistent political punch ups that these circumstances beg for.
Where the morality of photojournalism is concerned however, Vivienne does consistently allude to a bigger picture both literally and metaphorically, so that we are always prompted to think beyond what we are presented with. 
The Witness runs at Royal Court until 30th June.
Image by Robert Workman
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