Fireworks – A carnival of horror

Death. Darkness. Claustrophobia. Darkness. Madness. Darkness. Dalia Taha’s new play Fireworks is not the celebration that the title suggests. Telling the story of two families battling for sanity in a besieged Palestine, Fireworks examines how children rationalise and interact with war and death, a jolting and twisted dichotomy.

I was apprehensive before going to see Fireworks. I had read about it, about the subjects it covered. I knew it was not going to be an easy watch. But it was definitely going to be a fascinating new take on the impact of warfare. The play is a product of a nearly two decade partnership the Royal Court has had with Palestinian writers, developing their untapped talent and unique life experience to create some wonderful pieces of theatre.

And what a way it started. The set: a single concrete room, suffocating in its rigidity, faded azure walls, minimal belongings, a crypt for the living. Dramatic lighting plunged us between total blackness and glimpses of their life, snapshots of a daily scene that photographed the surreal scene for us. We are constantly cut between these very short scenes throughout the whole play, highlighting the fleeting nature of the moments and lives we were witnessing.

We are presented with two families: Khalid (Saleh Bakri), his wife Nahla (Sirine Saba) and their daughter Lubna (Shakira Riddell-Morales) and Ahmad (Nabil Elouahabi), Samar (Shereen Martin) and their son Khalil (Yusuf Hofri). They are linked by their shared tower block and shared misery. Through them, two starkly different stories are played out, yet they are inherently intertwined by this shared experience, their behaviours completely understandable given the situation despite being unexplainable when viewed without context. It is a wonderful yet scaringly poignant insight into this inhuman situation we find these individuals, each coping and rationalising in their own way.

Coping. That and how different coping methods interact in such a stressful situation is what the piece is about. Whether it be revenge, religion, insurmountable grief, distraction, violence or escapism, each character has their own way of tackling this reality. Rockets become fireworks, dreams become reality, everything melts into an amalgam of fantasy and misery.

Lubna’s story plays out on the background of her brother Ali, “martyred” by crossfire in a horrifying accident. Her mother Nahla is utterly broken, completely grief-stricken that she wants to take her own life just so she can return to him. Khalid, her husband, copes by distracting himself with broken radios. Lubna, jealous of her brother’s attention, does anything to win her parents back.

Khalil on the other hand has been deeply disturbed by the war around him, moulded by its perversion into a violent individual that his father describes as a “punishment”. His mother uses him as a way to escape reality, preserving him in an eternal childhood so they can escape away together to a distant planet in the games. But he has no interest in that. His world is one of guns, spies and death. His father, disturbed by his wife’s psychological castration of their son is determined to turn him into a man. He teaches him how to shave. He teaches him about martyrdom. It is a twisted reality.

What I think is good about this play is that it does not at any time explicitly mention Israel, making the story applicable to any war zone in which children or in fact any civilians are caught up. This is not a political play. This is a play about people and about how unhappiness and an unnatural situation can twist all the humanity we take for granted. Adults escape reality by turning life into a fantasy, a game. Children age much too young, with games filled with the death and violence that they see around them, as if that is normality.

Child actors are troublesome for me. Call me biased but I find it difficult to engage with them like I can with adults, perhaps due to their inherent lack of experience, their inelastic emotional range or their grating voice! There is little that can be done in a play that is ultimately about child psychology but I found the performances of Hofri and Riddell-Morales fell slightly short. I guess I’m the bad guy now!

However, overall the acting was not too bad and you did find yourself utterly engrossed in their suffering as the story crescendoed to its bitter climax. “I want to tell you a story”. Lubna, dressed in her Eid clothes, concludes the play, the story of her and her family’s life not as reality but as a mere story, as if it didn’t exist, as if the whole story of their life was just a dream. It is chilling, the perfect ending to a play that leaves you feeling deeply uncomfortable, provoking you to react to a drama that is much too real just to be a story. It must still be happening throughout Palestine to this day and throughout any war zone across the world where innocents are forced to face realities that they never chose. I look forward to Taha’s future productions. She shows plenty of promise and sheds on a new light on this age-old story.

Fireworks is at the Royal Court until 14th March. Tickets are £20, £10 on Mondays