The Bridge
Alaa Shehada & Sam Beale, who also directs
Palestine Comedy Club
Bush Theatre
Star rating: 3.5
It’s engaging and very funny. Alaa Shehada has a terrific talent for physical theatre, mime, mimicry and comic timing. He also knows exactly how to work the audience.
It’s fascinating too that, in the present political climate, a Palestinian writer/actor can create a piece which is not about violence and killing. Rather it’s about the ordinary lives of decent Palestinian people, whose foibles he has fun sending up. It uses humour to highlight the aftermath of colonialist decisions made over a century ago by British politicians – chilling quotes from them are projected on the back wall and spoken as voice overs.
Shehada’s character is making an annual journey from his mother’s home in Jenin in the West Bank to her sister in Amman in Jordan. His mission is to take a canister of olive oil from the family olive grove (nice evocation of the harvesting when he was a child – olive trees on the back wall). The oil is, of courses, symbolic of the affection, ties and difficulties his people face. The only way Palestinians are allowed out of the West Bank is by road across “The Bridge” in the heart of the Jordan valley. He fantasies about an airport in Palestine and a Palestinian airline – maybe one day?
So it’s a quest story as he rides in a crowded bus and befriends an elderly woman. The flies on the Bridge are, he thinks, an evolved subspecies. He characterises the bus driver, a beautiful girl with perfect eyeliner, a female Israeli soldier who scans the bus for bombs and many others. It’s all very convincing – as moving as it is funny because it’s a pretty uncomfortable, lengthy, hazardous journey with long waits at every check point. Julius Pollux Rothlaender’s sound design and Lily Dawford’s lighting add plenty of atmospheric authenticity
Shehada is a talented actor but in his enthusiasm for naturalism he often speaks too fast and frequently stumbles over words. And since he has a strong natural accent as well as imitating a range of other voices this makes for audibility issues. The lay out of the Bush’s main space exacerbates this because however hard he and the director try to use the space effectively there are many points at which he has his back to half the audience. I probably failed to hear, or misheard at least fifteen per cent of the script. And, for the record, I had a hearing test recently and ascertained that this definitely isn’t my problem.
