No Such Sweetness

In January of this year, the UK Government pledged to accept 500 refugees from the Civil War in Syria. _Oh My Sweet Land _tackles the other 2.3 million refugees who don’t have that “privilege”. A collaboration between Amir Nizar Zuabi and Corinne Jaber resulted in this play, inspired by their trip to the Syrian refugee camps in Jordan and hearing the stories of people in the harshest moments of their lives.

A one woman show, Jaber plays a young Parisian with Syrian roots who falls in love with Ashraf, a refugee from the Civil War. Guilty about leaving his family and haunted by memories of the Syrian atrocities, Ashraf disappears from Paris without a word. In love with Ashraf and desperate to form a connection to her Syrian roots, the young woman travels to the Middle East to find the answers she needs. Meeting countless Syrians on her way, Jaber recounts the stories they tell her and builds a picture of a civil war which has “nothing civil about it”.

When I went to see Oh My Sweet Land, I knew almost nothing about it, except that it was based on the Syrian civil war. I expected to hear a woman pleading for people to acknowledge what is going on in Syria, to do something about the crimes of the regime and their opponents. But instead, I found a woman simply talking about the embarrassment and pain of its people. With almost no effort, the play conveys a very simple message; the west might have forgotten about the Syrians, but they’re just like you and me.

While it is hard for us to understand what these people go through, what really struck me was that while watching this play, I felt embarrassed, and I almost felt responsible in part for their hardship. This may seem a little overdoing it, I know, I’m not in any way involved, but the play did masterfully force the audience to consider the role each individual plays in such conflicts. While the plot seemed somewhat fabricated in an attempt to frame the stories of the refugees, the play maintains a strong and damning tone throughout which conveys the mood of the civil war better than any of the plot in itself. Jaber’s performance throughout was certainly not flawless, but it didn’t have to be. What comes across as somewhat rusty at times seems justified when considering quite how damaged her character really is.

I would have liked to see more of the damaged side of Jaber’s character and at times I felt there was a certain lack of conviction in her description of the stories people told her. However, what the play lacked in detail is more than made up for by the powerful stories told throughout and the chilling tone felt by the audience, from the first to the last minute of the play. A real calling card by the Young Vic, this great small theatre has once again shown its ability to give the stage a whole new face. While this won’t go down as one of my favourite trips to the theatre, this play is certainly a must-see for all those who feel, like me, a strange need to understand the little details of the lives of people struck by such a terrible war.