Old Vic Theatre
London's West End
30/10/05

by Joanna

First times

Well, Sunday was indeed a day of firsts: my first trip up to London to see a play; my first time meeting Kevin and Strawberry (both lovely, btw!); Bruno's first time performing on a West End stage (which I feel privileged to have gotten to see); and my first time walking past Eddie Izzard in his shorts and tee shirt, as he went, seemingly, on his lil exercise-driven way!

Me, Bruno and the stage

I feel sure that I had one of the best seats in the auditorium for Bruno gazing/praising, as I was only a few rows from the stage - in an aisle seat - and for large sections of the play, I was actually facing Bruno quite close up.....boy, he ain't half got large biceps (larger still than when he was at that recent 10^th Planet signing!)!! Is Bruno a regular gym visitor? Hmmmm, what a difficult question to answer...!!!!!!!!!!!!

And because a cold was raging its way through me at the time (and still is!!), there was one brief spell where a cough kept threatening to splutter forth from me - mainly when Bruno was speaking - but a few quick swigs of water stopped those urges......thank god!

And I even sat next to a lovely man who was a fellow Outpost Gallifreyian. He'd gone, on 1 October, to the 10^th planet signing to see Bruno; and I found out that he'd asked Bruno if he'd got inside the Dalek casing on the Doctor Who set - he hadn't! I think (only, I think - damn rubbish memory!) that Bruno had replied that he hadn't because it was too small. And yes, this man also (surprise, surprise!) thought Bruno was lovely!

However, I was sat in front of this woman who kept ‘adjusting' herself throughout the play - she even talked to the woman sat next to her at one point! But I wasn't going to let her ruin the play for me, and, therefore, she most certainly didn't!

The Play

Night Sky was put on to raise both funds and awareness for the magazine Index On Censorship, which focuses on preserving and promoting freedom of expression around the world.

Cast:

+ Bruno Langley (Ali)
+ Saffron Burrows (Natasha)
+ David Baddiel (George)
+ David Warner (John)
+ Christopher Eccleston (Captain Goss/Tom)
+ Navin Chowdry (Censor/Captain Evans)

Author: Rachel Wagstaff

Director: Gari Jones

Music: Simon Gray

Lighting: Stuart Crane

Sound: Steve Ellis

The Set: All of the actors were deliberately dressed in darkish clothing, and they all had with them binders which contained their scripts (at one point, Christopher Eccleston didn't use his, though, when he had some minimal dialogue with the Censor - there‘s a little bit of trivia for you!!!!). The set consisted of a number of wooden crates, sat on by the cast (except Christopher and Navin) for varying spells, and a few props (including a bucket, which Bruno got to walk off stage with!!!!).

The play both began and ended with a monologue (both delivered by Bruno as Ali), with the stage lighting being put to good use here.

Rare sound effects were heard, tending to take the form of gunshots (including the sounds of an explosion right near the start of the play as the convicts are rescued by Captain Tom), and there was the occasional burst of atmospheric music.

Synopsis: Four dissidents (Ali, Natasha, George and John) are unjustly imprisoned by a regime that's rotten and corrupt at its core.

As the play opens, Ali relates the hastening advancement of his beating by regime guards (for daring to cross the border in order to seek out food for his family back home, who are gradually starving to death), as Natasha then subsequently tells of being the anguished onlooker to the brutal deed itself.

After an unknown period of time in captivity, the four prisoners are rescued by someone called the ‘Captain‘, as they consequently end up in a hideout, awaiting further help. But the longer they wait for this help, the more suspicions over the Captain's veracity creep into their minds (with Ali the only one determined to consistently believe the best of him), whilst they all ruminate on their desperate situation and try to each best deal with it in their own unique ways.

The Captain (who works secretly for good within the regime), having left them in the hideout, soon returns, however, but all bloodied and pale. He reveals that he has been found out, and that he had been suspected for some time of having been working against the dictatorship for his own ends.

A key scene, just after this dire revelation, comes when it is revealed that the Captain is really John's son, Tom. John's wife and daughter (Cara) had long since been murdered, and John had always believed his son was responsible for the killings. But in this scene, we not only find out of their familial link, but that Tom hadn't killed his mother and sister after all.

Tom had had a gun held to his head by a regime soldier as he'd been ordered to "Kill one and we'll let the other go"........

Tom's mother begs him to kill her, as the gun wavers in his hand, his eyes flitting between his mother and his sister. The play's audience now hear the Censor counting down from 10 as he awaits the results of his heartless ultimatum. After the count of one, Tom's arm slackens, the gun he holds now dropping down with it. And now the sound of gunfire descends, as both Tom's mother and sister are now disposed of by this evil dictatorship.

Tom and his father now make up after years apart, but time seems to be closing in on them both.

‘Thousands of guns' are now trained on all of them from outside of their hideout, but the Captain reveals that some of the guns contain blanks, which gives them some slim hopes for an escape. So, they decide to make a run for it - except George, who feels their attempt at flight is a pointless endeavour. Ali, however, seems resigned to his ill-favoured fate, as he thanks Natasha for everything she's done for him and asks her to help his family.

The audience now hears the sound of gunfire once more, as the escapees try and dodge the soldiers' bullets and try and survive into another day. For one of them, though, fate has now conspired against them, as bullets pierce through their flesh and rip through their sickly body - and that someone is Ali.

As the guns fall silent, Ali's ghost monologues, in a truly moving speech, the death of his spiritual alter ego, as Ali is now free and soaring into the night sky.

Character/Actors:

[Some of the below relates into the ‘fuller' script transcribed in the programme rather than what was actually played out on stage]

+ Ali (Bruno Langley) - [programme description] 20, of a slight frame, like a small bird.

[Throughout the play, Ali is barefooted - and the only character to be so]

Ali: They can control our world and even lock us up, but our minds can still soar.

George: He looks a bit like one of them rag dolls.

Along with Natasha's line early on about how Ali is malnourished, the above programme remark on Ali is the only aspect of the link between actor and character that is jarring with Bruno. On stage, Bruno's biceps were not far off tearing through his tee shirt, they were that huge, and he wasn't exactly frail of frame with it, so obviously there wasn't a match there with his character! However, you could hardly have expected Bruno to starve himself for the part!

Ali himself is a forlorn and emotionally vulnerable soul, who, as he clings to others to validate his own optimism and hopes, is a character filled with warmth, depth and heart.

He looks beyond the present into an idealised future, as his own present consists of dreams and fancy. He wants to make romanticised movies when he is freed from captivity (enthusing on the point to Natasha, who he wants to write a film about once he‘s free) and just can't accept that his present desperate situation has to filter beyond him and into the future. And his sleeping spirit is haunted by flashbacks to his past, where he is beaten, as loyal members of the regime try to find out the whereabouts of his mother.

He simply longs to be back with his family again, in which he has a mother and brothers who he clearly misses dreadfully, but a father who is a forgotten memory.

Though what he also longs for is to see the night sky again: "It's my favourite thing in the whole world". He used to look up at it and feel like he was flying, like he was free.

As the play begins, Ali has already crossed his country's border, having reluctantly left his family behind so he could go off in search of food for them all. But, unfortunately for Ali, he has been spotted in the act by regime guards - and guards who inevitably don't take too kindly to the dismissal of their country's laws, regardless of the grave moral and desperate needs and justifications of the boy who has broken them.

So, in the opening speech of the play, Ali reveals to us all the approach to his own beating......

It's cold in here. I'm not afraid. There'd be a clock. You wouldn't see it, but it would be ticking in the background. Then cut to a corridor. Dark figures approaching. The prisoner is sitting in the shadows, staring straight ahead, waiting. The sound of feet, marching ever closer. This isn't what I dreamt of. This isn't why I came here.

Natasha, having been the sorrowful witness to Ali‘s beating, then takes him under her wing and becomes a protector/mentor figure to him. She continues to look after him throughout his time in prison and he respects her greatly, looking to her for his comfort.

When the Captain rescues them all, taking them from, in effect, one prison to another, Ali never questions that his motives for helping them are anything other than pure, even when doubts have set into the minds of the others.

Ali: It's okay to like him.

But where Ali has seen hope and light, he eventually sees despair and darkness, as he reluctantly goes along with the decision of Captain Tom, Natasha and John (George opting to stay behind) to try their luck against the heavily armoured guards surrounding their hideout - a decision he feels is a doomed one where he is concerned......

Natasha: We'll make a run for it.

Ali: I wouldn't even make it down the road.

Natasha: Of course you will. I'll help you.

Natasha: We'll make it - both of us.

Ali: If you get past them, will you go to my family?

Natasha: Ali....

Ali: Please?

Natasha: Yes.

And so Ali's instinct on his fate proves correct, as he is mortally shot as he tries to catch up with his more physically able companions. However, with death comes a spiritual release for Ali, as he gets to soar into his beloved night sky, becoming a part of it forever.

So now Ali returns to us as a ghostly apparition, as he flashes back to his own death - and a death that has become weaved into his dreams, as his long-held ambitions of movie-making are realised at last.........

A boy, trying to run, but he's slowing then down. In the films in my head, if you love someone, you put their life before yours. He stumbles, as if he's been shot. He shouts at them to leave him, as he feels himself falling. Dissolve to a moment from his childhood. A small boy crossing a river, leaping from stone to stone. Sunlight dancing off the waters. The boy who would become the prisoner is watching sticks floating downstream. His mother is standing beside him, not holding his hand. The camera pans across and I can see my little brothers, pushing each other into the river. They're waving at me and laughing. I try to wave back, but the image dissolves... crossfade to the prisoner again, and as he falls, he can see the others, they're running, hand-in-hand, running as they will be forever. I'm still trying to wave but everything goes dark, and as I hit the ground, the lights fade to black. And I'm free. And it's beautiful now, and I float upwards., I'm soaring, into the night sky.

Now, these closing lines of the play were moving to listen to as Bruno sparkled out his delivery of them, but it actually wasn't until reading the lines in the programme that the full emotional clarity and depth to the words within actually hit me. And when they did, I actually became a bit emotional. The lines parallel themselves against you, as the heart within the words actually break your own. Truly heart-rending, beautiful words (thank you, Rachel Wagstaff) that express awakening dreams, memories so precious they can never die, and the freedom of a tortured soul - a soul that now soars beyond the stars into the calling of its destiny.

Regarding Bruno's portrayal of Ali, well, to me, he was absolutely superb. He wasn't a revelation in the part, as I already know of the immense raw talent he possesses, but he was a total joy to behold - and it was obvious to me that he had learnt his lines inside out too.

Every word he spoke was imparted with emotional understanding and passion, as well as being infused with the 'essence' of Ali himself.

He exuded a real stage presence and truly shone as Ali. He had an air of quiet concentration about him as he immersed himself totally into the story, with Ali and his desperate plight being his ‘reality' for the near hour that he was on stage.

He was a real natural on the stage, his lines flowing out of him with heart as he brought a true sense of believability into the character of Ali.

His performance was the standout one, for me. It was the one that grabbed hold of my emotions tightly and wouldn't let them go. And I know I am biased towards Bruno, so maybe it could be argued that I would say this regardless of whether he genuinely could be assessed to have been the best actor up there on the night - but I am biased for good reasons and my praise is sincere. This is because Bruno is a true original, blessed with a talent that many would understandably envy. And, boy, does he have the looks to round these other attributes off nicely!!!!

So, in short, Bruno was absolutely ruddy marvellous!

Some 'lovely' Bruno observations:

- As mentioned earlier, since the recent 10^th Planet signing that he attended, Bruno has obviously been working out A LOT, as his biceps were absolutely HUUUGGGGEEEE - and rather nice to ‘observe' too....and at such close range!!!!

- Bruno's typically flushed cheeks were very much in evidence!

- When the Captain rescues the convicts from their besieged prison, he has to drag Ali out from it. So, that meant I watched as Bruno was manhandled off the stage by Christopher Eccleston - oh, the hardship that was to suffer....or not!!!!

- Bruno did a lovely deadpan delivery of the last line of this:

"This picnic I went on when I was little. It was by a river. My brothers were trying to push each other in but then they ganged up on me instead. It was pretty funny."

- At one point in the play, whilst he was waiting for his next scripted involvement in it, Bruno dextrously held, with just two fingers, the rings of his binder containing the script, letting it hover in front of him - nice!!

- It's not only Bruno's eyes that pierce through you: his voice does too - rather 'agreeable' tones indeed!!!!

- Bruno was barefooted throughout the play, and, on a number of occasions, curled up on the floor in repose - lovely!!

- Saffron Burrows sometimes got to rub at Bruno's shoulders, and was either sat or stood next to him for most of the play - oh, what I would have given!

- At the end of the play, as he walked off from a darkened stage, Bruno tripped over a wooden crate (one of the props), but he didn't let it adversely affect him and he went off stage in his merry way, and was soon back out there, all smiles, with the rest of the cast to receive his most deserved of applause!

+ Natasha (Saffron Burrows) - [programme description] 20s, quietly beautiful.

Natasha: I always wanted a brother. I wish I could remember.

George: (regarding the name ‘Natasha‘) That's ‘ah, Satan' backwards.

A kind of mentor to Ali, she's cared for him since he'd been left to die after a beating by regime soldiers.

We don't learn a great deal about Natasha's background as the story plays out, but we do find out, through her interactions with Ali and the others, that she is a good -hearted person who cares deeply about the world around her.

We do find out, though, that she had been told that she had no family because they'd been in an accident. But Natasha questions this disclosure: ".....but what if I do have parents and stuff and I just don't remember?"

And we also discover the reason why she took Ali in after his beating:

"That's why I took you in, Ali. I saw you lying there, and it was like I'd fallen into this dream I have all the time - of this boy, curled up on his side, just like you were, and he's crying, and I don't know who he is, but every time I wake up, I feel so sad."

Our first impressions of her character begin to form strongly right from the start of the play, as, after Ali becomes the observer to the beating that was closing in on him, Natasha becomes the witness to the act itself and its tormenting aftermath......

He was lying there. There were five of them, and they were kicking him, over and over again. I know some people are just evil, that's how it is - but he was just lying there, like a child. They left when they'd finished, like they do, like they always do. I waited for a minute, maybe two, to make sure they'd gone. I thought I'd stand there, one human standing near another. I've seen them beat and kill so many dissidents before to protect us... but the way he was lying, curled up, just a boy. I know it sounds strange but it was like - it was like I'd been in that moment before. And then he started crying. I closed my eyes. I could feel the sunlight on my face, so I turned towards the sky and I breathed in, and all around it was so still, apart from the boy's sobs. And I thought, "I don't know what to do."

Once relocated by the Captain to a confinement elsewhere, Natasha becomes acquainted with George, her new fellow convict, who takes an instant liking to her and makes sure she knows about it too. Natasha isn't interested, though, and as time passes by, George starts to come on too strongly with her. Luckily for Natasha, however, the Captain reappears just at this moment and forces George to back off.

Before this occurs, though, George and Natasha, trying to find some light within the darkness of their shared situation, spend a whole hour engaged in cockroach racing - Natasha and ‘Boris' storming to their eventual victory.

But Natasha soon leaves a defiant George behind, as her and the others leave the ‘safety' of their hiding place and make a run for freedom - Ali shot and killed as he lags behind them. Her fate is left unknown.

Saffron Burrows was extremely competent as Natasha. However, I didn't feel that she truly lost herself in the part like Bruno did in his. There wasn't enough depth in her performance, and when she occasionally thrust her forearm into the air when her words were taking on more meaning, it felt more like something Saffron felt she wanted there to match her words rather than it being there as something to match the character.

+ George (David Baddiel) - [programme description] 30s-40s, a strong man, a survivor.

George: I'm good with words.

We first meet George in the underground cavern that Natasha, Ali and John have been transferred to. He sits, eating a banana, having spent 4 years ("One thousand, three hundred and eighty four days: that's how long I've been inside") holed up in this one cavern. He masks his fears by putting up barriers that are jovial, spirited and occasionally non-committal, as he deals with his plight by glossing over its darkness.

George: One day I looked at myself and I saw I was wearing their clothes and eating their food and going off to work in their factory and I ...didn't want to do it anymore. So I went out without my ID card. Course, I got stopped and that was it.

He's married, but prefers not to dwell too heavily on the fact....."She never sent me any parcels. Bitch. Not a single one. I reckon they told her I was dead. Good as. She'll get the shock of her life when I turn up."

He takes a fancy to Natasha, with his non-too-subtle remarks in her direction signalling this clearly to her. She doesn't share his way of thinking, but, needing a release from the tension surrounding her, she engages in a spell of cockroach racing with George. He names his cockroach Doris, after his wife, whilst Natasha's is called Boris. She beats George 4-3, and as his forfeit, he has to do a dance, on one leg, entitled ‘Happy Pig', whilst singing, "I‘m a happy pig, I‘m a happy pig, look at my trotters, look at my tail, I‘m a happy pig!"

And whilst he is hopping about, doing this dance, he accidentally steps into the cup holding Boris and Doris, knocking it over and killing both the cockroaches at exactly the same time!

Natasha: Can't believe you named a cockroach after your wife?

George: You would if you'd met her.

He occasionally whiles away his time telling anecdotes, at one point revealing that he used to take bets with previous convicts on how long people would survive their imprisonment.

He tells of one man, ‘Jacky-boy‘, who he'd given a fortnight to live, but had actually managed to last out for eighteen days. And on this eighteenth day, ‘Jacky-boy' had hung himself with some sheets, his trousers soaked with urine and covered with his own excrement, as his muscles had relaxed as he died.

George even tells the story, that his wife had initially relayed to him, about how you can tell if someone is a psychopath (with the Captain ‘losing‘ the test!), as he tries to take the edge off both his boredom and his inner pain.

More revelations come when he confesses how, to keep them happy, he used to help the prison guards rough up his fellow inmates. However, he admits that after a year or two of this, he started to beat them up when the guards weren't around....."If you're the one giving it out, you're no longer afraid."

Near the end of Natasha's confinement, he goes a bit too far and starts to aggressively make a move on her, but the Captain appears at that moment and warns him off.

When George later hears of how the Captain has been unearthed as a traitor to the regime, he decides to stay where he is rather than join the others in their attempted escape, believing their efforts to be futile......"You'll be going to your graves." As with Natasha, his fate is left unexplored.

As George, David Baddiel was outstanding. He got lines of both light and shade to recite, and delivered them all with aplomb. It was a very accomplished performance and really showed off the extent of his talents to great effect. He appeared very comfortable on stage and really made George, and the space he occupied on stage, his own.

And his "I'm a happy pig" little song-and-dance number was very amusingly played too!

+ John (David Warner) - [programme description] 50s-60s, the air of a survivor.

John: I've been living somewhere else for the last twenty years. When I left, they were just beginning to take control. They must have found a way to manipulate people's memories, like some kind of mass hypnosis or something...

John is a man who has known much tragedy in his life. Many years before his imprisonment, his wife and daughter had both been murdered - and he had always believed his son, who he'd been told was also dead and who is later revealed to be the Captain himself, to be responsible for this.

John: You shot them.

Captain: Is that what they told you?

John: That's what I know.

So, as John finds himself being reacquainted with his son, unhealed wounds become raw once more......

Captain: Why didn't you come back for me?

[Pause]

John: How did you know where to find me?

Captain: I monitor the intake of prisoners here. I saw your name on the list, the age, the description. I knew it had to be you.

[Silence]

John: Will they kill us straight away then? Is that how it's going to be?

Captain: Sorry? What do you....

John: You think I actually believe this is some magic rescue! Is this your way of getting revenge?

[Pause]

Captain: Why did you go?

John: I had no reason to stay.

[The Censor laughs. Captain looks at him, perhaps strikes John, or we see at least the Captain's wish to strike John. Silence. John laughs.]

John: Do you really think I give a shit what happens to me now?

John first realises that he has set eyes on his son again, after many years apart, after the blast in which they'd all first encountered the Captain.

John: In the prison, after the blast, I knew it was him. It's the eyes, you see - they were always so... all these years I'd thought he was dead and then, there he was - just standing there, wearing his uniform - and I wanted to hold him - it's ridiculous - I wanted to hold him because there hasn't been a single day that's gone by when I haven't thought about him.

Near the end of John's time in captivity, the truth of his family's murder comes to light, as revealed to him by his own son......

Captain: (to his father) I answered the door and they asked where you were. I said you'd gone away but they came in anyway. They tore the place apart, tied up Mum and Cara. Then they put a pistol in my hand. She was screaming, Cara... Dad, she wasn't even ten.

[The Censor steps into the scene, back into the memory. He stands by Tom, who is now kneeling, a boy of 15. The Censor holds a gun to Tom's head. There are screams.]

Censor: Kill one and we'll let the other go.

[Tom looks between his (imagined) mother and sister. The screams continue.]

Captain: Mum's begging me to shoot her but I can't, I just can't.

Censor: If you don't, we'll kill them both - then you.

[Tom is rooted to the spot. The screams are now cries.]

Censor: Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.

[Censor looks at Tom. Tom holds the gun in his hand. Tom freezes. The Censor looks at Tom, turns and nods to those (imagined) by his side. The sound of gunfire, rapid, continuous. The screams stop.]

And so John is finally reconciled with his son, Tom......

John: I heard you were alive. I found out you'd been made a Captain. I thought you'd been working for them all olong. That's why I came back... I'm so sorry...

However, they are soon at risk of being parted once more, as the revelation has already come that the Captain has been uncovered as a betrayer of the regime, and armed guards (though some are only armed with blanks) are waiting for them all on the outside.

John makes a decision to risk the soldiers' fire and leave the cavern he is hiding out in. His son joins him, as do the others (except George), as he runs with them to an uncertain future....but a future that doesn't include a fatally wounded Ali.

David Warner played the part of John wonderfully. Believable, self-assured and faithful to the character, he suited the part superbly.

+ Captain Goss/Tom (Christopher Eccleston) [programme description] - the Captain, 30s, a strong man, compelling.

Captain: The only way of beating them is by working from the inside, using their own weapons, hacking into their system, manipulating their information and records. We break open prisons, move people into hideouts like these, and from here convey you to the regions through a series of safe houses.

As a young boy of 15, Tom had been ordered by a staunch regime guard to kill either his mother or his sister, with that way one of them being spared. He couldn't bring himself to do it, so the guard did it for him - and murdered them both.

His father, John, had then, at some unknown point, taken on a mistaken understanding that he had been their murderer - and a murderer who had then been murdered himself.

John: ....When I got back, the house was silent, but there was blood, blood everywhere. I was told my family had been killed. I left the country that night.

And after witnessing his mother and sister's murders, Tom came to a enlightened conclusion......

Captain: I thought about trying to run away or something, but I started to think that maybe if it seemed like I was going along with them, there were ways of making a difference. And that it was the only way they'd leave me alone, that I could leave my memories.

So Captain Tom becomes a freedom fighter, working secretly against the regime he purports to support.

And whilst engaged in these moral duties, a chance to reunite with his father presents itself......

Captain: I monitor the intake of prisoners here. I saw your name on the list, the age, the description. I knew it had to be you.

After rescuing his father and a group of others from prison after it has been attacked, he makes clear to him that he was not the one who should be held accountable for the death's of his mother and sister.

He soon reunites with his father, before fleeing with him and Natasha (George staying behind and Ali killed by gunfire shortly after leaving the hideout), having been previously discovered to be a regime traitor.

Again, as with his father, Natasha and George, his fate is left to the audience's imaginations.

Christopher Eccleston made for a very effective Captain Goss. He was very at ease on the stage and took to his character well. However, he did stumble over his lines quite a number of times, and his delivery of them was occasionally a little flat, but I'd heard he was unwell in the days leading up to the performance, so that may account, to a degree, for these negative points.

+ Censor/Captain Evans (Navin Chowdry) [Censor's programme description] - either gender, self-assured.

Censor: In every puppet show, there is always a master pulling the strings.

The Censor is our narrator throughout, there to clarify our understanding of what we are seeing and experiencing.

He also represents the regime itself, being its loyal mouthpiece and champion, as well as acting as Captain Evans, who is Captain Goss's superior - though, of course, only in the sense of the regime's hierarchy!

Censor: People need to be protected. Time past and time future are validated only by the present moment, so it is in the present we must live.

There is no deceit, in that there is nothing beyond or before. There is only this, and it must be preserved at any cost.

Censor: Knowledge is meaningless. There is nothing beyond this moment.

[The Censor strikes Ali]

Censor: Beyond this pain.

[Ali lies on the floor. The Censor moves across to Natasha, blindfolds her.

The Censor stands apart.]

Censor: Why would someone put themselves out, risk their freedom for another? The rules are perfectly clear, even if human motivations are not. The web of thorns becomes more tangled and more blood will be shed.

Censor: The eternal quest for meaning, an elemental part of the human condition. Man sees suffering and wishes to blame it on God, on his fellow man, on anyone but himself. We liberate our people from the shackles of doubt and greed, doubt by eliminating faith, greed by removing the free market. Do we rob people of their humanity by denying them the ability to choose freely? Perhaps. But people are happier than they were; there is less trouble to them. In every garden of flowers there are always weeds which need... pruning, but that's to be expected. Casualties of peace. They never last long.

Navin Chowdry impressed as the Censor/Captain Evans. He brought to the role (I'll blend them as one part here!) what I felt it needed, imparting his words with a sense of calmness and moral satisfaction that represented well the feelings of a regime adherent.

He kept his portrayal to an understated fashion, but that, for me, was a truer interpretation of his character than a portrayal that was boisterous and raging. His character believes himself to be in the right, and believes that even if the populace can't see it, he is only acting in the best interests of them all, so, at his core, there is no deep-seated guilt/agony from his actions to cause anger and torment to penetrate his moods.

Play overview: Written by Rachel Wagstaff and directed by Gari Jones, this was a play to make you think, a play to captivate and engross, a play to alert the senses beyond the surface and into the realms of our subconscious powers, and a play to spend a thoroughly riveting near hour to.

Rachel Wagstaff has triumphed in creating a powerful, thought-provoking and yet entertaining piece of work.

She weaved themes including loyalty, friendship, the evils of corruption, self-preservation, repression and human distinctions and connections into a coherent narrative that, for me, informed, challenged the mind and senses, sustained an absorbed interest....and provided a few laughs along the way too!

Rachel's words often attained heights of eloquence and emotional potency, with her occasional visitation into humour and light keeping a steady balance to proceedings which brought a welcome richness to the play.

I found the play to be full of insights into the human condition, as it exhibited the individual guises that mould motivations, and spotlighted the fact that we are all filled with flaws and infallibilities that shape our existence into one fuller, more rounded and sometimes more dangerous.

So, Rachel has crafted a script filled with words of the 5 "p's": power, passion, poetry, perception and pleasure; and I, for one, feel privileged to have experienced its intensely capturing nature at first-hand.

Regarding Gari Jones's direction, it had a very simplistic edge to it, which I actually found to be a highly effective way of bringing out the intensities and depths within the play.

And his direction had an understated and distanced feel to it, which allowed the play to breathe and take control of its own life.

But he encompassed this open style of direction with ideas that were tight and organised, and which consequently gave the play a consistent, managed quality that maintained a focus for its energies and passions.

His interpretation of how to shape the play for a successful showing on stage was an exercise in proficiency, discernment and taking a satisfying advantage of a creative profound gift from within. Wonderful.

In terms of the music/sound and lighting, these were all used to very good effect. I don't feel that any of these aspects to the play were overdone, with them only being used when their effectiveness would be vital to the power of the story. So throughout the play they took on a sort of ‘less is more' quality, which only enhanced their influence on proceedings, in my view.

The Sympathiser

The character, for me, that I found myself sympathising with the most during the course of the play was Ali.

He was the youngest of the group of prisoners who were incarcerated without merit, and seemed to have the most vulnerability and heart to his character in comparison to the others he was surrounded by.

He had many ironies within his character too: he was idealistic yet grounded, and mentally and physically frail from his many injuries and torments, yet strong of spirit. And as these are qualities that I see as representing the contradictions and struggles within us all, I found his character an easier one to connect with and feel for.

Ali is someone who had known such sadness and pain in his life, and from such a young age, that, again, I found sympathies for him more forthcoming than I did for his fellow captives, Natasha, John and George - even though I sympathised greatly with them all, feeling sorrow and hurt for them to varying degrees.

And this boy, who had only strayed beyond his home to try and find food for his deprived family, only got, in return for his ‘troubles', beatings and heartbreak as he struggled to cope with the injustices and torments of his lot.

The play closed as Ali has been tragically and brutally murdered in his attempted flight of freedom from his hideout, his ghost monologuing his precious yet tortured final moments.

However, as Ali's young life, one full of so much potential and so many dreams, was snatched away from him so cruelly and prematurely, the freedom that he'd sought in that life, finally became his in death......"And I‘m free. And it's beautiful now, and I float upwards, I'm soaring, into the night sky."

Final thoughts

Well, the evening of 30 October is now one etched happily in my memory. It was a special evening that I was privileged to experience. It was one of catching up with friends, watching the world go by in the London bustle, one where a play of heart and soul played out mesmerisingly in front of me as I thought, "I'd like to be up there doing that", and one where a single bright star, unaware of its own power, shone out its bewitching light from the Night Sky above me - and that star was, and is, Bruno Langley.

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