Showing @ Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh until Tue 12 Aug @ times vary
This is a show about ownership and interpretation, with the play within a play dealing with Lord Ganesha’s journey to reclaim the Swastika – originally an ancient Hindu symbol – from the Nazis. Interspersed with this quest tale are the backstage arguments amongst the cast, debating whether they fully comprehend the roles they are being asked to play and if they can truthfully engage with a subject as important as the holocaust.
The cast is made up predominantly of actors with various intellectual disabilities and questions of understanding the roles and demands of the story are constantly being asked, as are ideas of consent and authority as the director, played by David Woods – the only non-disabled cast member – passive aggressively shapes the story and performance more and more to his own liking.
If all this makes the play sound heavy going it’s far from that. The cast have clearly enjoyed building this story and it feels as if they’ve drawn on the realities of their rehearsal experiences and exaggerated their own personalities to come up with scenes depicting clashes of ideas and ego – particularly those between Woods and actor Scott Price – that anyone who’s ever been involved in a theatre production will recognise.
In a play that questions the ownership of ideas Back to Back Theatre have created a poised and self-possessed piece of theatre which challenges its audience – sometimes directly – to ask questions of their own judgement and their own prejudices, but does so without ever failing to be engaging.
Showing as part of the Edinburgh International Festival 2014