Oh My Sweet Land, Young Vic, theatre review
The desperate plight of Syria's refugees conveyed in searing one-woman show
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.The desperate plight of Syria's two million refugees is searingly and sensitively communicated in this one-woman show, conceived and performed by the half-Syrian actress, Corinne Jaber, and written by its director Amir Nizar Zuabi.
Based on the testimony they gathered in the camps of Lebanon and Jordan, the piece shows us this humanitarian crisis through the eyes of a half-Syrian, Paris-dwelling woman who travels to the Middle East in search of a refugee activist lover who has disappeared.
While recounting her quest-story, she prepares and cooks kubah, a traditional Syrian dish, as if to calm her agitation with the muscle memory of this ritual, but intimations of atrocity start to gather round the slap of raw meat and the sizzle of boiling oil.
This is not docu-drama in the manner of the verbatim-derived The Fear of Breathing: Stories from the Syrian Revolution at the Finborough. It's first-person and impressionistic and threaded through with the speaker's memories of her culture-clash childhood.
But the refugee voices that are relayed – the mother, say, who gave her anxious insomniac children sleeping pills and then could not wake them when the airplanes attacked – are piercing as is the tragic sense of a people who feel abandoned by the West.
By the end, you certainly don't feel like eating.
To 3 May; 0207 922 2922
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments