Cry Havoc ☆☆☆☆
Park Theatre
Is there a right way to care? Can you love in the wrong way?
Cry Havoc looks at these questions and more as the play opens to reveal a shabby but cultured room in Cairo, with books lining the floors and intricately carved wooden panels casting shadows on the tattered walls. Traditional Arabic music plays as a soft breeze flutters the curtains at an open window.
Mohammed (played by a captivating James El-Sharawy) returns home looking dishevelled, followed shortly after by Nicholas (Marc Antolin) his British boyfriend. Its revealed that Mohammed has been arrested after protesting against the government and was tortured and raped in the six days he was imprisoned.
Nicholas tells us he felt so helpless during Mohammed’s incarceration and feels guilty that his association with a degenerate westerner may have been the cause of Mohammed’s arrest. Mohammed insists he couldn’t have helped “You are not useless. Just British” turning the immigration narrative we usually hear on its head.
As the hours, then days pass, Nicholas becomes almost annoyingly upbeat; he flaps around with bandages, ointment and a medicinal whisky and is determined to find a longer term solution for his boyfriend. He dashes off to the embassy to try to blag a visa and meets the terrifying Ms. Nevers (played with an elegant blend of power and sagacious intuition by Karren Winchester). Superlative writing from playwright Tom Coash and skilled direction from Pamela Schermann have created a truly memorable character which catapults the play into surreal territory as during each interview she asks Nicholas to strip a little further; a metaphor perhaps for looking deep within himself and asking himself what he really wants to achieve and we finally learn it is to “To keep the man I love safe”.
This timely play touches on the complex and sensitive issue recently surfacing during this year’s Comic Relief of ‘white saviour stereotypes’ where well-meaning celebrities such as Ed Sheeran front videos for charities and (he is so touched by their plight) he offers to put Liberian homeless children up in hotels. It could be argued Nicholas is also playing the “white saviour” – swooping into people’s lives and making grand gestures, making it all about themselves, with little understanding of the wider situation.
Indeed, Mohammed has a moment of clarity that a visa may not be the answer and his future is now bleak; “In Egypt I can’t be me. Anywhere else I can’t be Egyptian” and we see him choose a different path. The inequality in opportunity also takes its toll on their relationship – spoiler alert! – there is no Hollywood style happy ending here!
This is a truly internationalist piece of work that leads LGBT theatre off the Chemsex navel gazing treadmill and takes us on a journey of new perspectives found in unexpected places.
https://www.parktheatre.co.uk/whats-on/cry-havoc until April 20th 2019
REVIEW: JONNY WARD 